ich bin ein berliner

... no dad, i'm not REALLY a jelly donut. but anyway, this is the part of my fantastic voyage where i end up in berlin. yes, it's a place deep in history and architecture - well, maybe not architecture seein as how most of the city was destroyed in WWII. but then again, most of the buildings are brand new since the wall came down... so some of it looks nice. so eling and i went on a bike tour monday afternoon. so i'm gonna break up this city into two posts, this one will cover random junk i that's not on the bike tour - the other will cover the bike tour. enjoy.

so we started off our personal tour sunday night with a walk around checkpoint charlie. turns out our hotel was only about 3 blocks from the thing, so we went for it. at the top, you can see a picture of eling and i in front of the concrete bags and stand. i'm not sure if this is even a legit shack, but it's where everyone takes pictures. the famous "you are leaving the american sector" sign is standing on the sidewalk to our right. again, not sure if it's legit - but it's the best they got.

so the last time i came here (prolly june-july 1990) they didn't have all this fancy stuff up and they hadn't officially taken down the physical wall (now there's a scant 1.3km left of it at various points in the city). anyway, when the 4 of us were walkin down the wall, we took it upon ourselves to grab a stray length of rebar from the ground and take a few baseball swings at the good ole wall and knock piecies off it. i still got mine at home, i know rico does and i'm pretty sure li'l lynnie has hers somewhere safe too. after all those wallpeckers came through (that's what the locals call people who chip away the wall, get it.. .woodpecker - wallpecker) this is what some parts of the wall actually look like. not that beautiful.

so throughout the city, there's a demarcation where the wall used to be. two sets of coble stones so you can easily identify where it was. so eling and i took it upon ourselves to take the most touristy photos we could think of. the whole "i'm in east berlin, i'm in west berlin" set of pics. enjoy. it's amazing that i can hop and forth between communism and capitalism so easily.

here i am defiantly stradling the border and showing that there is no east berlin, there is no west berlin - there's only german beer.

so our evening jaunt took us through a few of the highlights of the city. this is the brandburg gate all lit up for the beautiful sunday evening. this is one of the main symbols of germany, all those pics you see of the people standing on the wall and looking over was taken here, cause it's the only place that the wall was wide enough to stand on. there's prolly some historical context here too, but i just like the winged lady being led by 4 horses on the top.

as we kept going, we also passed the main opel dealership in the city (for those of you that don't know, opel is gm's brand over in europe). rico, you need to get the product development people off their asses. really. they're puttin THAT in a showroom??? might as well just put in a trabant or something.

berlin's flag contains a bear on a white flag with red borders at the top and bottom (i think somethin like the name of the city originated from bear in some language - or that may just be a complete lie). but either way, a few years back unesco wanted to raise some money. so they had about 15-20 of these statues made up and painted different ways and then auctioned them off. apparently those bears are kinda famous, being toured around the world at times - no clue why. but anyway, the city began craftin a bunch of these plastic bears throughout the city. it costs a bit of money, but you can get these painted for a price to the city (anythin to raise money). personally, i thought this bears thoughts were in the right place - so i joined him, coincidentally wearin the same colors.

the remainin pieces of the wall that haven't been torn down comprise a set of murals called the "eastside gallery". it's a beautiful stretch of about a kilometer, so if you have a chance you should really check it out. i have too many pics to put them up here, but i'll give you a teaser with this one. cause, all in all we're just another brick in the wall.