Barcelona: Day 42 : Last Day in Berlin

Today we were allotted time for whatever we wanted to do, and after sleeping in for a bit and eating breakfast, a small group of us hit the streets. The goal was to find a library that had a lot of interesting architecture books. We did indeed find it, and it had some really interesting things, and I got a little bit of a taste of the sorts of architectural books that are out there.


It was kind of exciting, the though of buying a book that would actually be something I might want to look at and revisit for architectural ideas. In some I feel like one of my goals is eventually have a sort of vast collection of architectural literature in a personal library. This would be the very beginning of that -- how cool would it be to say that you bought the first book in this set in Berlin.

I ended up not buying anything, but that's quite alright with me. There will indeed be other times to

We moved down the road, popping into H&M and some other places. I knew I needed to get some postcards to send to people, and so I took care of that. I also got some clothes and shoes, and an actual souvenir from Germany that was representative of the country that we spent time in.

Fun story of the day:
We went to get lunch at this little Asian food kiosk after deciding that KFC would be way too expensive (note for future travelers: US-based fast food is so much more expensive across the pond!) So we had just gotten our food, and I'm putting some sauce on my chicken, when all of a sudden Kendall and Ryan double back. Some lady in complete business attire had just thrown up out of nowhere! I didn't turn around to look, but I could certainly hear it spatter all over the ground -- something super serious must have happened to make her just upchuck everything in a matter of seconds. It was like she was surprised it happened, and had reached up to stop it with her hands and instead just ended up with vomit all over hands. It was probably the grossest thing ever... Regardless, the morning was completely successful.

That night we met up with Kathrin in the Friedrichstraße station and we went to dinner. The place is an old ballroom that is actually still quite used and there were even lessons going on when we walked in to eat. The tables are placed around the dance floor so we got a chance to watch some people learning to tango. I'm not much for dancing and probably would not have done it had we the opportunity, but it looked like something that maybe one day I would like to try. I tried yet another type of beer, and it was really good. It was called Krovice Dunkel I believe... the dark version of Krovice. It looked like it was Russian.. but I have no idea to be honest.

We were bound to leave early in the morning and get on a high speed train to Frankfurt, so Kathrin went with us back to the hotel. However, just as with Madrid, I went out and took a late night walk just to try to soak as much of Berlin in as possible before we left.

The thing I noticed that was most striking about the schedule of Germany (or at least Berlin) is that once it hits 10pm or something close to that, the world just stops. It seems to shut down; it's entirely quiet and actually really peaceful. It was amazing to think that this peaceful calm would exist in a city with the size and stature of Berlin. It's honestly so much nicer than Spain, and I feel like I can actually walk around not have to worry about being pick-pocketed or anything like that. I'm gonna miss this place a lot, but hopefully one day I will have the opportunity to return!