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Sam and I hopped out of bed around 10 the next morning in lovely Berlin, prepped for the day, and headed out. Sam suggested we get some “real” breakfast food, of the variety not available in Spain, and I could not have agreed more. We decided to head over to a recommended 24 hour café in Charlottenberg, on the west side of the city. As ever, a little votive candle and nice ambiance greeted us. I found Berlin, unlike most of Spain, to be a distinctly modern city. Lots of old buildings converted to new uses, and the café was no exception. The decrepit brick walls were set off by modern lighting fixtures, a long glass bar, and a spattering of contemporary art.

I ordered some tea and a farmer’s omelette; I laughed at Sam when she got fried eggs and ham. She went “Oh shit” when she realized that she could get that for any meal of the day in Spain, and I just kept laughing. The food came out, and it was very fulfilling.

Afterwards, Sam and I split up to expore different things. I decided to stay in the general area, and set off in the direction of nearby Tiergarten, the huge park in the center of Berlin. On the way, I passed loads of department stores and very western establishments. I couldn’t fight off the urge to check my email when I saw an easyInternetCafe, so I dropped in for about half an hour.

Internet obsession sated, I continued into Tiergarten as rain started to sputter up. The park is beautiful, in an almost-untouched-by-human-hands kind of way. Unlike Parque del Retiro in Madrid, which is a beautiful park with just enough trees to create a practically endless canopy, Tiergarten is more of a woods, and it gave off an almost Russian vibe to me. A branch of the River Spree meanders through the park, and the trees were just shy of their peak colors. It was really awesome, minus the constant raindrops.

I eventually arrived at an S-bahn, and grabbed a train across the city. Sam and I arranged to meet up, and a trip that probably would have taken an hour in Chicago took me all of 20 minutes. No joke.

Short aside: I’ve been thinking about the El a lot lately, and why it’s not as effective as public transportation in Europe. I’ve decided it’s because of Lake Michigan. Everyone, myself included, complains about how Chicago has a hub system; how you have to take a train into the center of the city then grab another one out instead of taking a more direct path between two points. But the only way a more dense, grid-like system (see Madrid, Paris, Berlin) makes sense is if the city is a more conventional circle. In that shape, it might make sense to have a train from Midway to the University and then on to somewhere northeast of the city out in the lake. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make any sense to have the terminus of a train line be Hyde Park, or Belmont, or any lakefront communities besides downtown, because there just isn’t the population to support it. Stupid lake. Plus, Chicago is just too spread out.

Anyway, Sam and I met up in the hipster neighborhood of Prenzlauerberg, on the north-east side of the city. The area reminded me very much of Belmont before the start of its ongoing chain-ization. Lots of independent record stores, thrift stores, nice little bars/restaurants/cafes, and a diverse crowd. After window shopping for a while, we decided to stop into one of the bar/restaurant/cafes (most of the eating establishments I encountered in Berlin were of this variety), and we ordered some beer. I also ended up getting a Ciabatta pesto/salami sandwich, which was presented on a huge square plate in very modern (ie the pesto-slathered half the sandwich was standing straight up) fashion. Sam settled on some tortilla chips and salsa, wary of the German-only menu. Quite a nice light lunch.

We walked around the neighborhood for quite a while longer, and I ecstatically found a copy of The Economist for the flight back. A bit drowsy, we stopped at Balzac Café, a Berlin coffeeshop chain. It. Is. Starbucks. To. A. T. Amazing. No joke, it looks and feels and might as well be Starbucks. The only difference is you get a real cup if you dine in. Everything else, the pastries, the registers, the sizes, the drinks, the layout of the menus, the curvy-walled architecture and paint colors, EVERYTHING, was a blatant Starbucks rip-off.

Re-energized, we hopped on the U-bahn and were whisked away to Kreuzberg, the “punk”/largely immigrant neighborhood towards the south-east of the city. We walked around a while, and settled on a bar for another beer. It had a 90s era big blocky plastic digital jukebox that kept crapping out awful music, so we didn’t stay long. Somehow, time passed pretty quickly, and by around 8 decided on a German restaurant for dinner. God, German food is so good; I’m glad I’m not there or I would have gained 50 pounds this quarter. I’ve missed butter, something they apparently deem unnecessary in Spanish cuisine. I had some vegetable soup, then beef (not ham!) and spätzel. Delicious.

After dinner, we decided to act German, and we each bought a half-liter of Becks for the U-bahn ride back to the hostel. There, we dropped off our bags and headed back out around eleven.

We stayed in Mitte for the night to save on a taxi ride home, and for easy access to the hostel when we decided to call it quits; our Sunday morning flight required that we get up at around 5. We hit up three bars, including a “sheesha” bar (when I said hookah, the waiter wrote down “Coca-Cola” and I had to point to a nearby hookah), and Sam and I just talked more and more drunkenly about how much we loved Berlin. Around 2, we decided to head in, but not before stopping off at Döner Kebap. For those uninitiated in the beauty of Döner Kebap, it is a drunk food staple in all of Spain and apparently Germany, too. It’s just a dirt-cheap schwarma sandwich establishment open until the wee hours of the morning, and it’s too good for words. And even better, the Döner Kebap of Berlin was insanely delicious, and included a half liter of Beck’s for less than €4. Great deal; we chowed down, then hit the sack.

Out the door by 5:30 the next morning, we flagged a (Mercedes, of course) taxi, and were reluctantly carted off to the airport. Because of new airport security measures literally instituted that day, Sam and I got the complete frisking. Then the guard asked Sam, “How many lighters do you have?” - “Two, I think.” - “No, you have three. We have a problem,” he said in his gruff German accent. He made her get rid of two (because you can’t light a bomb with only one), and we boarded. The flight left on time and all, and it was kind of sad to return to Madrid. A bus, three metro lines, and two more buses later, I was back to Toledo and writing essays, pondering all the ways I might be able to learn German.