Day 37

  
Didn't do much today (I'm just taking it easy this week, as this weekend it going to be very busy with both Matt and Valerie here), asides from the usual reading, practicing, watching a movie, and taking a stroll later on in the day (I try to walk some every day).  Also went to the gym and ran as usual.
 

Day 36

   

I had a pretty low key today as well, which involved me reading some more, practicing piano for a while, and then taking a short stroll around downtown.

My stroll was a bit interesting though.  I started out taking the U-bahn from Nollendorfplatz to Potsdamer Platz, and walking from there to the Brandenburger Tor, and on to Unter den Linden.  I made a quick stop at this rather amazing store I discovered.  There is a brand of chocolates in Germany (and as well are available in the US) called Ritter Sport, well, I actually found a Ritter Sport store in berlin.  Needless to say there were a couple of thousand bars of chocolate inside...and I might have bought one or two...the chocolate it really tasty to say the least!

After that I walked down Friedrichstrasse.  I knew that there is a Music Conservatory in the area around Charlottenstrasse (one street over from Friedrichstrasse), but I had been unsuccessful in finding it.  I asked around a few places, and was actually able to find it.  I went inside and looked around.  The building itself is not very wide (the size of an average store in width), but continues up the entire building (around 7 stories) and goes back quite a ways.  

The building was actually kinda grungy on the inside, however once you get inside the offices and practice rooms, it's actually quite lovely.  I was able to see the inside of one professor's office, which featured new wood flooring, several large windows (with a lot of natural light), and clean white walls, with cool looking crown molding on the corners on the ceiling.  The studio had 2 7-foot Steinways in it, both in phenomenal condition (according to professor, all the studios had pianos just as good).  So all in all, it looked like a pretty good school.

After that I headed back to the apartment, and had dinner.  Stayed up a while longer watching TV with the Thiermeiers, and after that went to bed.

    

Day 35

  

Today I confirmed with my friends Matt (from high school) and Valerie (from Rice) are coming to visit over this soming forth of july weekend!  I'm pretty excited about having them here.  Matt is supposed to arrive thursday night via train from Karlsruhe (where he's working this summer), and Valerie is flying in Friday from London.

I spent most of the day cleaning up the apartment a bit, as well as trying to figure out some stuff we could do over the weekend.  Later in the afternoon I headed over to Potsdamer platz and hung out for a while (mostly just chilled enjoying the breeze and shade) and read more of my book.  I'm almost done with Stones into Schools now.  My next book will be The Languages of Japan by one of my professors next semester Matt Shibatani (basically it's my way of getting caught up in a class where I'm supposed to have 2 years of japanese already before taking...).  The professor already told me I'd be fine taking the class - which btw. is called "Structure of Japanese", which covers the grammatical structure and other aspects of modern Japanese, however it's not actually a japanese language class, it just covers aspects of its grammar from a structural point of view - but it might help if I read the textbook over summer before the class starts.  Hence, it's my next book.

  

Day 34

  

After yesterday's long day, I stayed in most of the day taking it easy.  It was nice and cool, so I could let the apartment air out (necessary every 4 or 5 days).  Also practiced piano quite a bit in the afternoon.  Other than that just got a lot of reading done, and enjoyed the day.

Day 33

  

Today was incredibly long.  It started bright and early (about 8:30am) with a quick shower, breakfast, and then out the door.  Why?  I had made plans to meet up with Timo's dad (Detleff) at around 10am to go for a 3.5 hour cruise of Berlin's canals and river.  

We met up at Hansaplatz U-bahn station, walking over into Bellevue area of Tiergarten (all areas within central Berlin), and walked down to a dock next to the Spree (a river that flows through the city).  We ended up having to wait about half an hour for the tour to start.  No problem though - I always prefer to be a bit early and wait than to be late.

While there, we met up with two of Detlef's friends, one of whom was a neighbor.  They both were incredibly nice and provided fun conversation during the cruise.

The cruise took off promptly at 11am, and started driving clockwise around the city.  The driver provided commentary as we went along, a lot of which actually in the local Berlinerisch (berlin dialect of german).  Detlef also speaks this dialect natively, which I got to listen to all day! Surprisingly it had a lot of features that Dutch has, i.e. using "t"s in a lot of places where Hochdeutsch (the "official" dialect of german) uses "s"s (examples: saying "wat" instead of "was" (which means "what"), or "det" instead of "das" (which means "that")).  Needless to say, after the afternoon was over, I had a lot of data I could work on in analyzing differences between different dialects and different languages (moreover, why Berlinerisch is easier for a Hochdeutsch speaker to understand than Dutch).

Anyways, back to the tour...below are some pics:

Berliner Dom (left)

Our Cruiseboat

Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Train Station)

Free loader...

A cool locale on the side of the river

Oberbaumbrücke

Me with Detlef's friends

After the cruise was over, we headed over to Detlef's mother's house for coffee and cake.  Another one of Detlef's friends joined us there as well.  Everything was incredibly delicious.  The cake was a light sponge cake on the bottom layer, topped with sweet cream, fruit sauce (rasberry I think), and sesame seeds - no pics, sorry!  We stayed there for a few hours talking, and then all of us (except for Detlef's mother) walked to the U-bahn to head over to Neukölln to check out a big street festival there.  We went into a few stores and bought some stuff, and then grabbed some dinner at this really great Thai place.  While at dinner, I got a call from some other friends, and made plans to meet them later that night.

After dinner, I said goodbye to the group, and headed back to the apartment.  I showered (was pretty nasty after sitting out in the sun all day!), changed, and went to meet my other friends at Ku'damm.  

We were meeting up to go to the club Maxxim.  There was supposed to be a fashion show that Sam was in, and we wanted to see her.  Unfortunately as we got to the door of the club, the door guys said that it was "ladies night", i.e. no men allowed.  We thought this was odd, as the website said that men could get in, but they just had to pay a little more.  In any case, the guys couldn't get in, so we just hung around for a while until  the show was over.  I heard it was really good, but haven't seen any pics yet.

After that, we hung out for a few more hours, just talking and walking around.  After a while, people were starting to get tired, so we headed our separate ways.

   

Day 32

  

Today Mrs. Thiermeier, Nina and I went out to Wustrau, where Nina keeps her horse.  It was a multi purpose trip - in the morning, there were master classes for the horse riders, and late afternoon there was a public show exhibiting Baroque Horse riding, as well as a couple of other choreographed numbers with horses.

We got there around noon.  I grabbed some lunch (they had a lot of sausages and rolls, as well as some home made cakes, etc) and went over to the lake to go swimming.

Wustrau is right next to a large lake, and features a few nice opened up areas next to the water through the woods next to the town.  I brought a book as well (currently reading Stones into Schools, the sequel to Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortinson).  The water was a bit chilly, but definitely bearable.  I didn't stay in for too long though.  After that I sat down at a picnic table and read for a few hours.

I went to back to the stables for a bit to check up on things.  The master classes were still going on, and I was told that the show wasn't going to start till about 6, so I headed back to the lake and read for a while longer.

While I was out, I stopped at a cafe and saw that they sold fresh apple juice from a local farm.  It was really cheap as well - about a liter for 1 euro.  I drank that was a snack, and was really surprised at the flavor of it.  It wasn't like regular apple juice - it was not quite as sweet, a bit tart (but nowhere near granny-smith-apple-tart), but had a really nice refreshing taste to it as well.  It's not really describable beyond that unfortunately - you'll just have to come here and try it for yourself!

Later I headed back again in time for the show to start.  Unfortunately the light in the room I was in was aweful, so not many of my pics came out (for those who are camera-savvy, it was a bit dim, but also incredibly backlit as the sun was behind everyone.  Also, the lens on my camera is pretty narrow (52mm), and can't take in enough light to take crisp photos in that environment.  Essentially most of my pics came out blurry with proper exposure, or horribly underexposed but crisp.  And this was at 1600 ISO as well as at my lowest f-stop).

A couple of pics came out ok, at least enough to kind of get a feel for what the show was like.

Side Saddle

We stayed at the stables until about 9:30, and then headed back to the apartment.  I practiced piano for a while, and then headed to bed.

   

Day 30

   

This morning was interesting to say the least.  After waking up bright and early at my hotel in Amsterdam, I checked out, grabbed some breakfast (finally caved and had "american" pancakes), and headed to the train station.  I got there about half an hour before my train to Amersfoort was supposed to leave.

All was going well until they announced the first notice that the train would be 10 minutes late leaving.  I knew that I would still get to Amersfoort in time to make my connection.  But then that 10 minutes turned into 25 minutes, and before I knew it, I was being told over the intercom (first in dutch, then heavily accented (and because of the accent unintelligible) german, and then bad english), that I would need to take a train to Utrecht and then connect from there to Amersfoort to make my connection.

So I trusted what I heard and hopped on the train to Utrecht.  The trip wasn't long only about 20 minutes.  Of course I got there, and had no idea where I was supposed to go.  I found an information booth, and the guy there said to go to the "hi-speed train booth" (as they would have info on all the trains going international).  It took about 5 minutes to find where he was talking about, and then to my horror they wanted me to take a number and stand in line.

Apparently I looked pretty confused, as one of the ladys asked me directly from the counter (ignoring the people in front of me) if I was catching the train to Berlin (I'm guessing I wasn't the only connecting passenger they'd had to deal with).  I said yes, and they said I needed to hurry to track 12 to catch my train.  I had been looking at all the information boards about outgoing trains, and sure enough, there was a train on track 12 that had been delayed leaving for 15 minutes (giving me about 2 minutes by that point).  However, it didn't actually say where the train was GOING.  Hence my confusion.

So I hurried onto that track, and hopped onto the train.  I found one of the travel guides, and sure enough, this was my train to Berlin.

Funnily enough, the train I managed to catch in Utrecht (a stop about half an hour before getting to Amersfoort) was the exact same one I needed to catch in Amersfoort.  I'm not exactly sure, but I think one of the trains from that morning (no idea where) had some problem either making it not workable, or working with a delay, so they had to shuffle trains around, and as a result had delays to make sure people could still catch their connections.  By the time I got to Berlin, we had an hour and a half of delays.

Needless to say, I got back to Berlin without any other trouble.

While I was on the train though, Sam called, and said she needed a cover for a babysitting job she had.  She said none of her other friends could make it, and asked if I could do it.  I told her (this was while I was still en route) that I couldn't make any guarantees, but that if I got back to Berlin by 4pm, that I'd do it.  Well, I got back at around 3:30, so I ended up taking the job.

I had to be at the kid's house at around 6pm, and stay till the parents got home around midnightish.  All in all, it was actually pretty fun.  After that, I headed back to my apartment and crashed.

  

Day 29

   

So this morning I got up bright and early at around 5:40am, giving me enough time to re-pack up my suitcase, shower, get a quick breakfast, and down to the train station to make it in time to get the 7:00am train to Amersfoort, and then after to Amsterdam.

The train trips to both cities were pretty uneventful.  I have to say, the seats on Dutch trains are a lot more comfortable than those on german ones (i.e. my butt wasn't sore like after the train from berlin to the netherlands)...

I got to Amsterdam around 9:30 in the morning.  At the train station I put my bags in a locker, to keep them safe until I checked into my hotel.  Walking outside of the train station, I found a tourist information desk and promptly went in to get a city map.  While inside, I saw posters advertising an "I AMsterdam" card, which could be used for 1, 2 or 3 days (for increments of 38 euros).  This card would give the holder free access to all museums and churches (the churches here pretty much are museums), access to one of the canal cruise lines (which act like water-taxis with narration about where you are in the city), as well as free use of the public transportation (busses, trams, and amazingly a subway).

The card was only 38 euros, and seemed like a good deal.  Plus it comes with a free city map.  With that I was sold.

After leaving the tourist office, I went to go see what was around the train station, namely to buy some sunscreen (it was supposed to be in the 80's with a lot of sun) and a recharge for my cell phone minutes.  I found a store for the sun screen soon enough, but no luck on buying minutes.  Instead I just got a 10 euro phone card that I could use from pay phones.

I walked around for about half an hour, and discovered how close the red light discrict is to the train station.  Saw a few interesting stores (not going into details here...), and made my way over to de Nieuwe Kerk (the new church), which was one of the museums I could get into free.  The church itself was incredibly beautiful.  Inside there was a pipe organ that was over 100 feet tall, who's pipes were covered by painted panels.  The panels could be opened by a hydraulic pump when the organist wanted to play.

After that I made my way up to de Oude Kerk (the old church), and checked it out as well.  The inside was equally beautiful, with another impressive organ.  Interestingly, this church hasn't actually been used as a church for centuries, but rather a venue for concerts.

Since it was nearing noon, I decided I should try and find my hotel and see if I could check in.  Theoretically checkin wasn't until 2, but I didn't think it would to try earlier.  It turned out that my hotel wasn't that far away, only a 10 minute walk from de Oude Kerk.  I went to the front desk, and was able to check in and go see the room.  

The room itself is on the top floor of the hotel (5th floor), and located on the very back of the building.  I decided on a hotel instead of a hostel, as I decided now wasn't the time to see how safe hostels in amsterdam were...especially carrying my laptop, camera, as well as passport.  The room was actually nicer than I was expecting, with a very comfortable bed, private tile bathroom, and a window that could open (it was hot!).  I went after that to the train station to get my stuff and take it to the room.

After getting my stuff settled in, I decided to go explore the city.  Over the course of the day, I walked over about half of the city, starting in the north-east part near the train station, and ending up pretty far south west, near to the Rijksmuseum (state museum) and the Concertgebouw (concert hall).  I ended up going to quite a few museums as well, including the Van Gogh Museum, the Rembrandt House, The Old and New Churches, a photography exhibit of amsterdam in the 19th century, the Rijksmuseum, and eventually making it to the Concertgebouw.  Here are some pics of the city as I walked around:

A Market near the Rembrandt House

A display of what Rembrandt's paints would have looked like

A larger canal with a church in the distance

A smaller canal

Near my hotel

The Rijksmuseum.  Basically a good summary of what there is to see in Amsterdam: a lot of very cool old buildings, construction, green areas, and lots of tourists (it's actually packed here - see Market pic).

While walking around the Concertgebouw, I saw a sign for a concert tonight.  I looked at the pieces and saw that one of my favorites, the Beethoven Piano Concerto no. 4 in G Major was going to be played!  I went to the ticket office and asked if they still had any tickets (they did), and how much the cheapest one was.  It turned out that they had 10 euro tickets for the center of the orchestra section, perfect for viewing the pianist's hands.  Also, apparently the Concertgebouw has a deal with the public transportation company, as concert tickets can be used as train/bus/tram tickets for a few hours before and after a concert, ensuring that you can come to the concert and not have to pay extra for the train.

I had about an hour 45 minutes, enough time to go back to the hotel, shower, change, eat dinner, and come back to the Concertgebouw.  Luckily enough, there was a tram that went directly from the concert house to my hotel (at least, the stop was about 100 feet away).  It was about 15 minutes each way, so not bad on the timing either.

After showering, changing and heading back to the concert hall area, I went to find a place to have dinner.  I ended up finding a little cafe-type place, and had some roast beef, a drink, and a bowl of fruit, all for about 4 euros - quite affordable.

I then headed back to the concert hall to find my seat.  Walking through the building, I found an area where they were serving free drinks (namely REALLY good coffee and tea).  I had a cup of coffee with cream and a strawberry tart before sitting down for the concert.

The concert opened with some Berlioz piece (something about a Carnival - not sure the tital), which was pretty good.  Opening pieces are never really that exciting, as they are essentially filler pieces before the more important ones.  Essentially giving later-arriving members of the audience to get there and still not miss the good stuff.  

The second piece was the Beethoven Concerto.  It was absolutely amazing!  The pianist was incredible, and had a really good interpretation of the piece.  Also, they had him playing a German Steinway (made in Hamburg) which has a slightly different key mechanism than the american ones, which was interesting to hear.

There was an intermission after that, where they served complementary red wine, white wine, a rosee, champagne, and of course more coffee.  

After the intermission the orchestra proceeded to play the Tchaikovsky 1st Symphony, a piece I hadn't heard before.  I actually liked it more than I thought I would (early Tchaikovsky isn't always my farovite).  There were some parts of the piece that were absolutely jaw dropping, including a french horn feature in one movement, as well as a few lines in the flute part that required a tone quality on behalf of the flute player that I'd never heard before!  It sounded very edgy, with a lot of overtones pushed into the sound.  The sound itself had a shape to it that reminded me of a stainless-steel triangular prism (which is very different, considering flutes usually sound like round cylinders of butter or velvet (depends on the flute, really)).  

After the concert, I headed back to the hotel, stopping at an internet cafe on the way to check email quickly (no wifi in the hotel). 

Overall the day was really fun, and I got a good taste of some of the things Amsterdam has to offer.  Of course, you can't cover amsterdam in a day, and I didn't even get to a third of the museums/historical/cool things to see.  I also never got around to taking the canal cruise, so I'll have to leave those things for next time.

   

Day 28

  
Today I spent the entire day exploring the city of Groningen, located in the nothern part of Holland.

I got up in the morning relatively early (around 7 or so), and went downstairs to get breakfast.  Breakfast was very good - they had a huge assortment of rolls, cold cuts, cheese, fruit, cereal, and even a few american foods (namely sausage and bacon (!), as well as scrambled eggs).  After breakfast I grabbed my camera and started walking around the city.

I first walked down to the museum next to the train station, and soon after found that it was closed till the winter because of renovations.  No big deal, there are a lot of other museums around.  So I went to another, and saw that it was closed as well, but more that it was closed every monday.  This wasn't looking good for me, and my prediction was proven correct when I saw that the other museums around were all closed.  Oh well, there's always more to a city than its museums.

I walked around for a while and found one of the buildings from the State University of Groningen (one of the largest universities in the netherlands, with over 50,000 students).  The building was incredibly ornate.  It had stained glass even in the main stairwell.

I basically spent the entire day walking around, and saw some pretty cool things.  Enjoy the pics.

View from the Martinikerk

Some ducks from a park on the east side of the city.  They apparently get fed by people a lot, as they have no trouble sleeping in the middle of a foot path (even with people walking by), or following you until you give them food.  Yes, I was actually followed by a duck for about 200 feet until it realized I didn't have food for it!

Some of the tens of thousands of bikes in Groningen

A Cafe next to de Grote Markt (main square in Groningen)

Needless to say, I had a lot of fun checking out the city.  Tomorrow I'm actually going to go to Amsterdam for the day at least.  I'm currently looking into how much it would cost to stay the night there, as I have a feeling that will be an ideal situation for me.  Essentially if I came back to Groningen, that would involve taking a 30 minute train to Amersfoort, and then a 2 hour train from Amersfoort to Groningen.  And then I would have to make the same 2 hour trip south to Amersfoort to go back to Berlin.  It makes more sense for my to stay overnight in amsterdam and just take the 30 minute train to Amersfoort in the morning.  But I still have to find a place before I make up my mind.

  

Day 27

Today was long.  I woke up at 7 to go to the train station.  My train left from the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station in berlin) a bit after 8:30.  The seats on the train weren't incredibly comfortable, but they were good enough to get a few hours of sleep.

The train got to my connection in Amersfoort (in the Netherlands) mid afternoon, arriving about 15 minutes before my next train left.  It was plenty of time to figure out where in the station I needed to go, so no stress there.  It was a little less than 2 hours going from Amersfoort to Groningen, where I will be for a couple days.

My train got to Groningen late afternoon.  My uncle Harvey met me at the train station, and we walked about 10 minutes to get to our hotel.  It was pretty cold and cloudy (felt like upper 40s), a bit cooler than I was expecting (especially with it being in the 70s right now in Berlin), but I had my jacket with me, so it wasn't a problem.

The hotel was pretty nice.  I was surprized when I sat on the bed and felt springs!  My bed in the apartment is very comfortable, but it's foam.  I haven't slept on a spring mattress since I got here.

After looking up local restaurants, Harvey and I went to a restaurant called De Gulzige Kater (funnily enough, Kater means the same thing in both german and dutch - a male cat - however, also in both languages it's slang for "hangover".  Gulzige translates to greedy.).  The food was great.  We both ended up getting salads, Harvey's with shrimp and fish, mine with steak.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel, as we were both pretty tired from traveling (Harvey had a 6-hour time change to deal with as well, in addition to jet lag - I was just tired from staying up late last night).

I'm looking forward to exploring the city more tomorrow.

   

Days 25-26

   

Friday and Saturday I didn't really do that much, hence combining them into one entry.  On friday, I helped a friend move into his apartment, and then later went with some other friends to a Biergarten to watch another World Cup match.  

On Saturday, there was a parade (didn't bring my camera...sorry no pics) in the city that I went to with Sam and a few of her friends.  The parade itself was a lot of fun actually - there were like 30-40 floats and music everywhere.  After the parade was over, we headed over to Potsdamer Platz to figure out what we were going to do that night.  We decided to go see a movie, but had an hour and a half to kill before the movie started.  So we ended up going to a hookah bar (two people in the group wanted to smoke hookah, or Shisha as it's called here) and got dinner.  We went to a restaurant that is outside on the side of Oranienstrasse in northeast berlin.  Dinner itself was pretty good, I got a margherita pizza (basil leaves, mozzerella, and tomato sauce).  After dinner, Sam ended up headed out to see another one of her friends, but I went back to potsdamer platz with the rest of the group to see the movie.

We went to see When in Rome.  The movie itself was ok.  I mean, it was cute - a romantic comedy with a lot of american comedians, which resulted in a cute story with a lot of cheesy humor.  Overall, I thought it was fun.  The theater itself was incredibly nice.  The seats felt about as comfortable as lazy-boy recliners.  Also, in theaters here, your seat is preassigned (which has its plusses and minusses) when you buy your ticket.  So, there was no looking around for the "best" seat, but rather just finding the one already assigned.

After the movie, I headed back to the apartment, and got my suitcase together, as tomorrow I head to the Netherlands!

   

Day 24

 

Today I spent a lot of the day out in the city.  I went out early afternoon and checked out a part of north east berlin I hadn't been before, and also met a friend for a mid afternoon drink at a cafe (it was quite warm out, so the drink was quite welcome).  After that I headed back to my apartment (it was already near 5 by that point) to get ready for some friends to come over for dinner.

At around 6:30 Sam and Timo came over to have a dinner get together.  It was quite a blast!  Sam brought stuff to make really tasty sushi, as well as some stuff to drink, timo brought a few authentic german desserts, and I got the appetizer and another thing for dessert.  

Besides the party itself being a lot of fun, I'm glad we did it at my place, as it forced me to finally pick up my room and get everything in order.  You can actually see my desk and couch now!  

But anyways, back to the food.

We ate outside on the terrace next to my apartment.  There is already a table and a couple chairs there, and the weather was so nice today, that we thought it'd be a great place to eat.

Sam made the sushi at the table, which tasted quite excellent.

For an appetizer, we had wine, grapes, and french sausages (one with figs, the other with dried herbs).  The Sushi was two different types of rolls: one was a vegatarian roll, with cucumbers and wasabi; the second was a roll with cucumbers, wasabi, crab, and tuna.  We had two types of wine to drink, one was a spanish Rioja, and the second (more for dessert), a sweet chinese plum wine.  We also had a bit of sake to celebrate Timo going to the states next week.

Then we got to the dessert!

Timo brought the middle column of three pastries, each of which are very typical german sweets. The one on the bottom is a poppyseed pastry, the middle one is made with rasins, and the top one is made with marzipan.  The tart on the right and the three macaroons on the left I bought at a special chocolate/dessert shop on my street.  They were kinda pricy, but incredibly tasty.  If you can't tell by the picture, the tart on the right is a rasberry tart, and the macaroons are flavored (yellow = lemon, purple = rasberry, hot pink = johannesberry).

After that, Sam and Timo wanted to hear me play the piano for a bit, so I played a few of my older pieces (the Chopin Fantasy Impromtu, Brahms Rhapsody in g minor, and the Brahms Intermezzo in A).  After that the two had to go.

It was quite a fun day, with a bit of running around the city in the afternoon, and then such a fun dinner party in the evening.

  

Day 23

   

I didn't go out much today, but nevertheless it was quite an awesome day.

The weather was completely amazing, mid seventies, lowish humidity, so all the doors and windows were open again.

I've been really pulled into practicing more and more these days, and have also been getting urges to practice at really odd hours (like 2 to 4:30 in the morning, as it was today).  Maybe it has to do with having such easy access to really good pianos, which sit in a room with really nice acoustics, which is also pretty sound proof (i.e. late night practicing is no bother for the neighbors).  Music-wise I'm learning a couple of newish things right now.   The newest piece is the Rondo Capriccioso by Mendelssohn (fyi the intro is nice and all, but the fun part starts at 2 mins 24 secs in the recording).  I have it memorized, I just need to clean it up a bit.  I'm also working on (re)learning the op 10 no 4 Etude by Chopin.  I started this piece during the school year, but with my schedule being as hectic as it was, I couldn't even finish learning all the notes (especially the parts from 42 secs to 1 min 1 sec (believe it or not that's an entire page!)...there are so many accidentals in this section it's insane!).  So I'm learning them now, and hopefully will have it up to tempo by the end of the summer.  On top of that I'm trying to finish learning/memorizing the op 119 Rhapsodie in Eb major by Brahms.  This piece isn't so difficult per se, it's just a lot of notes to learn (started this one as well during the semester, but couldn't finish it due to time constraints).

So I practiced piano/clarinet most of the afternoon, went for a run, came back and had dinner. 

  

Day 22

  
Today I decided to finally go to the Pergamon Museum, one of the museums on the famous Museuminsel  (Island of Museums), which is famous for it's greek, roman, and islamic art, sculpture, and remnants of buildings.

I left the apartment mid afternoon, using the early part of the day to practice, and headed towards the Friedrichstrasse U-bahn station (located about half a mile from the museum).

Walking along the road from the U-bahn station was pretty cool.  I found myself in kind of an ally that paralleled the S-bahn track, where there were lots of cool looking shops and restaurants.  It was about as wide as a street, but only for pedestrians.

Soon I got to the entrance of the musem, paid for an entry ticket (5 euros for a student ticket), and headed inside.

The museum was really cool.  The main entrance was built to look like the entry to the Pergamon Altar (a temple built on the acropolis of Pergamon, Greece)

Yeah, so the lens on my camera is not nearly wide-angle enough to actually get the entire entry way to the altar in one frame, but if you can imagine another protrusion (as on the far side of the steps), but on the side closer that is cut out of the shot, you get the whole picture.  Here's a link to a page with some wider-angle shots of this altar.

After seeing the main throne room, I went into one of the large wings, in which there was a large exhibit on islamic art (including lots of calligraphy!), as well as collections of interiors of roman houses.  In another part of the museum (possibly my favorite part), they had lots of statues from early civalizations, including some with cuneiform writing (one of the oldest writing systems on the planet.  One such example was a statue of a kind of monster that was supposed to scare the enemy off (basically lion's body, eagle's wings, and a man's head), and then on the side was lots of cuneiform writing basically saying how awesome and powerful the king was, and how an enemy shouldn't mess with him.

and of course a close up of the writing

After I was done at the museum, I walked around stadtmitte, and discovered a Ritter Sport chocolate shop!  Basically Ritter is a brand of affordable, tasty chocolate, in a few bazillion flavors.  At this particular store, you could even make your own chocolate bar, provided you came back in half an hour (maybe later, didn't have time today).  Needless to say, I bought some chocolate.

After that I headed home, of course while sitting on the U-bahn, I was thinking about something and actually missed the stop for me to get off.  So, I got off at the next exit, got on the next train going in the opposite direction (without paying attention to the number of the train), and found myself after that at Ku'damm...definitely not the stop I intended.  So, finally getting on the right train, I got home in time for dinner with the Thiermeiers.
   

Day 21

Today was relatively uneventful, save for a fun incident this morning with my cell phone.  I am using now a german cell phone, and the charger I had for it wasn't working.  I changed out the SIM card and put it in the other cell phone that I brought (not knowing if I'd be able to find a working charger), which worked as a backup until I got another charger.  Luckily the Thiermeiers had one that worked, so that was all good.  However, when I put the SIM card back into the german cell phone, it didn't want to connect to the network (it just said "offline")... I looked through all of the menus to try to find something about getting it to reconnect, but to no avail.  Finally after restarting it a few times and messing with the options, I got it to work.  That was a relief.

Some of the time while I'm here in germany, I plan to travel around some (not just spend the entire time in berlin).  The time has come for the first of these little side trips: Groningen, Netherlands.

Well, not quite...I don't actually leave for another week, but I did buy my train tickets today!  I'm going to be taking the train early sunday from berlin, and will arrive in Groningen about 4:30 in the afternoon.  The price itself roundtrip was actually rather affordable as well, only about 90 euros (normally tickets are about 200 euros, but there was a special discount for whatever reason).

I'm going to Groningen to meet my uncle, who is there for a conference.  He'll be busy most of the time, but at least that gives me a base of operations to explore the city, and possibly to elsewhere (amsterdam is only 2 hours away, etc).  I'll be there for three days total.

  

Day 20

Wow, 20 days here already!  Definitely doesn't feel like it's been that long.

Today was a bit cooler even than yesterday, in the mid 50's...nevertheless needed the jacket again.

I didn't go out as much as yesterday.  I did go out at one point to check out a street fair that was going on a couple of blocks north of my apartment.  That was quite fun.  There were a lot of vendors and food, not to mention 5 live acts going on simultaneously (albeit not at the same location - they were spread out over several blocks).

After that I came back to the apartment, got caught up on this blog, and then went upstairs to the Thiermeiers to have dinner.

I was a little later coming than usual, so I ended up having a frozen pizza for dinner (amazingly, even the frozen food tastes better here) with a glass of red wine (a Rioja from Spain).  All quite enjoyable.

While eating dinner we watched the Germany vs. Australia game, which germany won (!) (part of the World Cup going on right now).  When germany won, one of the neighbors set off fireworks even!

This should be fun watching the World Cup here...especially since we're already winning!

Day 19

  

It was quite a bit cooler today, and rainy at times.  Actually needed a jacket (first time in over a week) and umbrella.  Nevertheless Timo and I headed out again, this time to check out the "Franco-German Festival" in northwest berlin.

It took about half an hour to get there, after two connections with the u-bahn and then further on a bus.  The festival itself actually was pretty similar to the state fair in the states, albeit different language, and different food.  The only part of the whole festival that was actually french was in one corner of the grounds with some french food stalls, as well as live music (a trio with guitar, accordian, and violin), a statue-maker exhibition, and a place where you could make soap.

One of the food stalls was selling spiced sausages, all of which were quite tasty (i.e. we said that we would buy a few, and they let us try all of them!).  We ended up buying a fig sausage, a sausage with herbs de prevence, and a third one with Thyme.  The guy running the display was actually german, from berlin, and interestingly enough was willing to talk to me in the local berlin dialect (berlinerisch), so I could start getting my ear around it (I got a recording as well...more analysis to come :) ).

After a while Timo and I headed out, this time over to his grandmother's apartment (had to pick up a few things there).  While there, she actually let me borrow a few books of poetry she had, all of which were written in the berlin dialect of german.  This definitely bodes well for me actually possibly learning to speak some of it!

Soon after we met up with Julian and spent the rest of the saturday night in the true berliner style (well, maybe not most berliners) at an observatory!  Julian and Timo both had worked there and had been under the mentorship of Wolfgang, one of the guys that works there.

The observatory is currently being used for the set of a movie, the title of which I never heard.  Apparently it's almost done being filmed, but there is one last scene they needed to get involving the office of the "mad scientist" character (which was all being staged upstairs in the room with the telescope).

The rest of the time we were there, Julian was getting some help with questions he had about some aspects of quantum mechanics from Wolfgang, which went on for a few hours.  It was cool to actually learn how to do some math in german (not necessarily new theorems or anything, but more how to do the basics like "times" "plus" "square root" "eigenvalue", and other vocab like "take an integral", among others).

After that it was about 1am, and we needed to head back.  We stopped quickly at an Imbiss stand to get some Döner (none of us had had dinner), and then headed back to our respective homes after that.

Note:  I used Timo's camera to take pics from today, and still haven't gotten them from him, so pictures will come soon.

Day 18

   

It wasn't quite so hot today, and the humidity finally backed off a bit, so today was a perfect day to open up all the windows in the apartment and get a nice breeze flowing through it.  After being out and about all day on thursday, today I didn't go out too much, just for a quick walk here and there.

One of the nice things about having an apartment on the ground floor, is that it opens up to a nice terrace with lots of plants, a few chairs, a table, all in the shade of tall trees.  Also, while out yesterday, I got a tomato plant!

It's actually growing pretty fast as well.  According to the gardner I got it from, it should be making tomatoes before I leave (if not, there are a bunch of tomatoes waiting for me at home as well).  Regardless, it'll be fun to take care of while I'm here.

Also, for the first time since here, I actually took some time to sit outside, enjoy the weather, and read a book.  It was incredibly relaxing - definitely will be doing more of that (especially since I need to do some pre-reading for one of my classes next semester...it's an interesting book though, so no worries).

   

Day 17

So the weather was a bit oppressively hot and humid, but overall it was a pretty fun day.

Timo is finally back from Norway, so we hung out some today.  We met up at my apartment and then headed on the U-bahn in the direction of the lakes in southwest berlin.  Halfway there though, Timo thought it might be cook to check out his old schools and the neighborhood he grew up.  So we got off the U-bahn  and walked around.

The area was really pretty.  The roads were two lanes, with a boulevard down the middle, and trees planted along both sides of the roads as well as in the middle, creating a cool canopy effect.  We went first to his elementary school (which actually teaches up through the high school level as well), and checked out the building and grounds.  It was a rather nice place, with airconditioning (!), and then lots of shaded areas outside (including an herb garden, a pond, several fields, and a playground set for the younger kids).  We also checked out the auditorium, which had in it a really nice piano!  Needless to say I was quite enthralled at the discovery.  The piano itself was an older (built in 1893 according to the serial number) Steinway, concert grand size (a little over 9 feet).  It was very well maintained, and the touch was incredible.  The keys were oddly shaped (the black keys  were a little shorter than I'm used to), but that didn't affect its playability.  I played a couple things on it before we headed out.

After that we walked up the road a couple miles, and headed over to the Free University (Freie Universität), which I had never visited before.  The campus definitely had a distinct feel to it.  It was incredibly green, like Rice, but the buildings had a more modern feel to them.  A lot of the buildings were kind of a metal, glass, and concrete mix, which is quite different from Rice.

We had been walking around a couple hours by then, so Timo and I stopped to get something to drink to cool down, and to enjoy a break from the heat and humidity in the dining hall's AC.  After resting for a bit, we headed on out and walked a few more miles down the road to get back to the u-bahn station we started at.  On the way, we passed a church that actually had the grave of Rudi Dutschke (click here if you don't know who he is).  Pretty cool. 

Also saw this in someone's front yard (not sure why it was there)...

We took the u-bahn over to the part of berlin where Timo's aunt lives.  We met up at her place and grabbed some lite food and had an impromtu picnic over at Rüdesheimerplatz.  Overall, a hot, but fun day out.

    

Day 16

   

Today I decided to go over to eastern berlin to check out a rather famous landmark, namely the East Side Gallery.

To get there, I took the U-bahn from Nollendorfplatz (the station near my apartment) all the way to Warschauerstrasse, got off, walked about half a mile down to the Spree river, and then turned up a road that ran parallel to the river.

The gallery itself is actually a long piece of wall (parts of which apparently came from the original berlin wall - don't quote me on that though, that's just what I heard from somebody), that was painted by famous graffiti artists over the last few years.

Each mural was about 20 feet long, and as high as the wall (about 12 feet or so).  Some ran a bit longer, and each was very cool.

A lot of the murals had themes of entrapment and subsequent freedom (paralleling the history of east berlin).  A lot of the murals had poetry and dedications to people who had died.  The whole thing was pretty powerful.

The gallery stretched along the road as far as you could see.

  

Day 15

Today Mrs. Thiermeier and I headed up to northwest berlin to check out the Charlottenburg Palace.  

The palace itself was originally just one wing, intended as a summer retreat for the prussian royal family outside of berlin (at the time of it's building, the town was not a part of Berlin - now it's well within the city limits), over time however more wings were added on, especially as the royal family spent more and more time there.

If you want to read more about the history of the palace, go here.

We couldn't tour the whole thing unfortunately (would take too long, and was rather expensive), so we went through the old palace (i.e. the original wing).

All the rooms were very nicely decorated (tons of paintings, tapestries, etc), and gold adorned (was a baroque and rococo style palace), with numerous antechambers, dressing rooms, beedrooms for the king and queen, seperate apartments for guests, as well as a large oval room used to greet guests as they arrived (this room opened into the garden, and sticks out from the line of the palace quite a ways).

Outside the palace was a large garden, park, lake, and mausoleum.  Inside the mausoleum lie 4 members of the royal family (can't remember which off the top of my head).  The mausoleum itself was built with lots of black marble, which gives it a very regal and solemn feel.

We spent about 3 hours at the museum.  Afterwards we headed to a cafe to get something to drink (was hot again today), and then headed back to the apartment on the U-Bahn.

After we got back, I went for a run, and then spent the rest of the evening sorting (still!) through the weekend's photos, and getting caught up on the blog.

  

Day 14

Today was pretty uneventful...pretty much I stayed in most of the day to rest, just went for a quick walk mid afternoon around the Tiergarten area (which is quite pretty - I'll take my camera next time) to get some air.  I practiced piano and clarinet for a while, and started sorting through the 800 pics from saturday and sunday.

I counted up how many pics I've taken in the last two weeks - I'm currently up to 2500 or so...I may need to be a bit more efficient with my picture taking, as that that's 3 MB per shot minimum!  I also looked at my hard drive, and I have more than 40 GB of pics since just last summer!

So, I will endeavor to still take good pics, but not waste so many shots in between.

Weather-wise, it's still warm, although not quite as hot as it was saturday and sunday.  This thursday and friday though it's supposed to get up to 90 (yay)!  The locals here are all complaining already about how hot it is, and how "humid", with only 60% humidity...I don't think people from berlin would fare well in houston during the summer!

Regardless I've definitely recuperated since the weekend, on to more stuff tomorrow!  

  

Day 13

I slept really well last night...guess that's what happens when you run around a big city for 2/3 of a day...

I got up around 11:30, checked emails etc, had breakfast, and made plans to meet up with Sam and Friends at 2:00 near Stadtmitte.

We met up at the chocolate shop, but resisted all urges to go in again (well they didn't anyways...I went in quickly before they got there to get a piece of marzipan :) ).  We headed up Friedrichsstrasse (another shopping district in Berlin, with some of the most expensive shops you could imagine) up towards Bebelplatz, as there was supposed to be another concert that afternoon (more on that later).  

We got to bebelplatz by about 2:30, but then discovered that the concert didn't even start until about 4, so that gave us a bit more time to wander around.

Steven and Chan wanted to go back to Checkpoint Charlie to take some more photos, and to read the info placards over there (they had the history of the wall, as well as a lot of the happenings during the cold war).  

After that, we headed back to Bebelplatz to catch the concert.  It was a live concert (not a broadcast like last night) of the Berlin State Orchestra (Staatskapelle Berlin) playing the Tchaikovsky Symphony number 4 in f minor.  This is one of my absolutely most favorite symphonies of all times.  It was completely amazing - I couldn't believe the concert was free!  Listening to it was a bit nastalgic as well as I played the same piece in orchestra back in high school...it made me really want to be able to play more orchestra at school, if only I had the time...

The concert lasted about an hour, after which we decided to head back to the Reichstag.  We wanted to take a look at the outside and get some pics.  When we got there, we noticed the line to go to the cupola was rather short, so on a whim we all decided to go up and see the view.  It only took 20 minutes to get through the line and into the building, a record, considering it normally takes 2+ hours!  

When we got to the top, we were given an audio tour earpiece that we could listen to as we walked around the cupola.  The view from the top was amazing!  You could see all of berlin from every direction!

As well the inside of the Cupola is quite cool to look at - there is a giant array of mirrors which reflect sunlight down directly into the building below.

And of course the exterior of the cupola is quite cool as well.

After heading out from the Reichstag, we went over to Potsdamerplatz and had dinner at the Cancun restaurant.  The restaurant was very ornately decorated, and the food was pretty good as well.  I ordered a plate of empenadas, and the others all got Chicken with Mole sauce.  

Sam and the others had to head back soon after that, as Steven and Chan's train was to leave at 11pm to go back to Hamburg.  I headed back to the apartment and crashed for the rest of the night, still exhausted from yesterday's events.

   

Day 12

 
Wow, today was incredibly busy!  I got up on the early side (i.e. before 9...) and met up with my friend Sam at the Brandenburger Gate at 10:30.  She brought two of her friends from singapore who are studying in Hamburg for the summer, and are visiting berlin this weekend.  We met up there to go on a free, 3-hour guided tour of central berlin.

The tour started at the Brandenburger Gate, went briefly to the Reichstag (basically to acknowledge that it was there...), and then headed over to the Jewish Memorial (holocaust related) which is located right next to the american embassy.  This memorial is a permanent art installation, made up of vertical concrete columns, put on downward sloping ground.  The entire area is a bit of an illusion, as when you look out over the top of the memorial, the tops of the stones go higher; yet at the same time the ground slopes downward.  When you walk through, you get a bit of an overwhelming feeling, as the stones completely take over everything.  You can't see much around you, just the 10 foot stones.  In the picture, you can't see the ground, just the tops of the stones.  Where I'm standing, the stones are only about a foot or 2 tall, but in the top right corner (where it looks like it slopes up a bit), they are closer to 10 feet tall (also, on a tangent, the skyline in the background is of the famous Potsdamer Platz, which I have mentioned in a few previous posts - its a giant entertainment center, with a three story mall made entirely of glass, an IMax theatre, a couple museums, and then some).

We then headed over with the tour to the spot where Hitler's underground bunker was located.  This was the bunker he and his goonies hid out in towards the end of the war as the Soviets marched into Berlin.  The bunker is not longer accessible to the public (as it was filled with concrete or something along those lines), but the walls still stand.

After that we walked over to a couple of older buildings, one of which was a former nazi government building (used now as one of the governmental buildings for the german government).  On the other side of the street from that building was a portion of the berlin wall (not much to look at, as it was mostly taken down, even at that spot where they tried to preserve it).

We walked two blocks further down the street to Friedrichsstrasse, and came to Checkpoint Charlie (the former entry point to east berlin from the west).  It wasn't much to look at (just a small shack, rebuilt to look like the original building before it was enlarged).  

After that, we took a half-hour break from the tour, and hung out at an expensive cafe (didn't buy anything, but enjoyed the shade, as it was about 85 degrees under full sun, no clouds).  When the tour resumed, we headed towards Stadtmitte (city-center), and checked out a very nice chocolate shop.  Inside they had sculptures of important buildings in berlin, made out of chocolate.

After that we checked out one more platz with the french and german doms, as well as a performing hall (not sure exactly what for, I heard everything from ballet to orchestra to opera).  The tour then went from there to Bebelplatz (next to Hedwigkirche, and across from the main building of the Humboldt University), where they were putting together a giant screen and speakers for a concert that night (more on that later).

The tour ended when we went to the Lustgarten between the Old Museum and the Berliner Dom (both on the Museum Island).  Although the tour was theoretically free, we all tipped the tour guide (as that is their only source of income).  

After the tour, we went back over to Humboldt, as there was a massive book sale going on in front.  Apparently this goes on every weekend, as a way of giving books and literature back to the community (in addition, the money raised by th sales is donated to charity), also serving as a remembrance of the book burning that happened on Bebelplatz during the nazi regime.  Many of the books burned there were first editions with no further printings, i.e. meaning that once burned, they were gone forever.  There was an entire library that was emptied during this burning.  A memorial to the lost books still stands in Bebelplatz: there is an opening in the ground covered with glass, which lets you look down about 40 feet, seeing nothing but empty shelves, where books should be.

We then headed over to Alexenderplatz to get some lunch.  I had döner again, it was incredibly tasty as always.  Sam had to head out soon thereafter as she had to babysit that night.  Her friends (steven and chan) and I then went to southwest berlin (as the tour had only covered stuff in central and north-eastern parts) to Ku'damm.  We went into the Gedächtnis Kirche, and after that got some currywurst.  There was a Bach Cantata in the church at 6, so we went in and listened.

After the Cantata, we took the U-bahn back up to Stadtmitte and went back to the chocolate shop - the guys wanted to buy Sam's mom a thank-you for letting them stay there the weekend.  I got a little something as well - quite delectible.  They were mini-truffles, with liqueur fillings.

After that we went back to Bebelplatz to watch the (Free) performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, which was being showed ont he big screen (A live video cast from the Berliner Staatsoper in the next building).  The opera was in russian, with german subtitles.  The guys I was with didn't really know much german, so I translated the subtitles for a while.  We came in pretty late to the opera, so we only caught the last half hour or so.  

After the opera was over, we went back to the Lustgarten in front of the Dom, and relaxed for a while.  It was about 10, so the sun was just going down (!), and we were enjoying the nice evening breeze, and finally break from the overbearing sun.  After about half an hour, we wandered back over to Alexanderplatz, and had some dinner.  I ordered a margherita pizza (tomatoes, basil and mozzerella) - the other two had pasta dishes.  After dinner we went our seperate ways, and I headed home to crash after being out for more than 14 hours.

Long day, but incredibly fun.