Berlin, days 1-2

Hey kids-

Tuesday morning two alarms failed us and we slept in an hourand a half later than we had intended, and had to take the 11am train toBerlin. What's nice about this group, is that none of us are stressers orworryers. Even Tim has learned to chillax and enjoy the ride! We checked out ofour hostel, hopped onto a waiting tram, rode it to the south train station,grabbed cheap food, and hopped onto the very prompt Deutsche Bahn. It was a 6 hour ride, and the mostanyone slept was 10 minutes at a time, which made for a long trip. As far asbeauty goes, I personally think that the south has northern germany beat, handsdown. When we finally arrived in Berlin (about 5pm), we found the correctsubway, rode that to the Brandenburg gate, and then walked about a half mile toour hostel.

Our hostel is situated directly in the midde of theinnenstadt (inner city); I don't think there's another hostel that's closer toall the major sights. It's unfortunate because there's no young feel to ourneighborhood, in fact, there's no neighborhood feel to our neighborhood, butthe convenience makes up for it. Berlin has not lost its poop smell,unforunately. They doubted me when I vented about it, but the stench isundeniable. The weather here has been pretty much like Oregon: sunny, cloudyfor a spell, light rain, and back to sun.

Last night we did nothing. Literally. We walked our"neighborhood," found a grocery store, ate dinner at Subway (our only optiondue to our tiredness), and hung out in our room. To justify such a lazyevening, we got up early and did a 9am FREE walking tour. Our guide was this very sweet Irish guyabout our age named Finn. Everyone but Jen had a major crush on him by the endof our 4 hours together. We saw the important sights of East Berlin- many ofwhich I had seen and knew about already, which of course made my head grow asize or two. Tomorrow I may go on the West Berlin tour myself, since thesethree are whiney little kids in the morning. Our tentative plan for tomorrow isto buy all day passes for public transportation and just go. No concrete plansexcept that I'm dragging them through the Jewish Museum in southwest Berlin,and we'll hopefully at some point locate Kreuzburg. The subway systems hereconfuse me to no end; we wanted to go to a gay club last night, but since I'mthe only one that really makes an effort with directions and logistics, itdidn't happen.

Right now, Tim's listening to his iPod, Jacob's reading,Jen's showering, and I'm doing photo/blog stuff for you guys. After we do somelaundry, we're gonna check out a memorial to the gay victims of the Nazis, walkthrough a free museum about the Jewish victims, eat authentic german food, andgo to a bar crawl, which will end in a club that was voted #8 coolest club inthe world. Wish us luck!