History Lesson

First thing we did today was arrive on time to the Berlin free city tour which started at 11. We had an AMAZING tour guide! Her name was Stephanie, she's from New Zealand, and is passionately in love with Berlin. She wanted all of us to be in love with it too, so her energy, enthusiasm, and knowledge were a great first look at the city. The tour was about three hours long, but afterward Stephanie invited us to come with her to a great schnitzel place. Since the only German schnitzel I had was a bad, carnival-food version of it at Spring Fest in Munich, I thought getting to know our fantastic tour guide more and eating a nice lunch was in order.

Aside from Laura and I, another boy (Oliver from Texas) and this other guy from Venezuela joined us. The schnitzel was alright but I think overall I'm not a huge fan. Talking with these new people however, especially Stephanie, was a real treat. We stopped talking so much about tour-guide things and just had a normal conversation. But at the end, she drew out the exact path we walked on my map and recommended a ton of other cool places to go (circling and writing on my map). This is great for my map art project, because I want them to reflect where we were, what we did, and who we met along the way. Anyway, she was basically like a giant jack pot of hints to Berlin - it was fantastic.

If you read even a little bit about how much I learned in Prague on the free city tour, you can imagine how much I learned about Berlin and Germany. Stephanie literally gave us the last 800 years of history in a 3 hour run down. Anyway, I really don't have time to write all that out, but I will save a space for it.

[What I learned on the Berlin free city tour.]

Meanwhile, our host, Steph, has also taken in another CouchSurfer named Nadine who is from Egypt. Nadine was a total sweetheart and I really enjoyed talking with her, especially about Egypt. It made me really nostalgic for my Egyptian host family from SAS though!

I was exhausted - not sure why - maybe this trip is finally wearing on me a little bit. Even when I sleep enough I wake up tired. Anyway, after my nap Laura and I asked Steph for a cheap delicious dinner option. She lives in the Turkish district and recommended a doner kebap place around the corner where you can get a HUGE gyro (everybody here calls them donor kebaps) for 2 euros. 2 euros for a gyro, yes. They turned out to be AMAZING!!! And so much food. And the kebap man was the cutest nicest man ever! We both knew right then that we would be primarily surviving off of cheap gyros for the rest of our time here...

After dinner, I'd gotten an email from Nicole filled with tips regarding places to go/eat/drink and a suggestion for meeting up in a couple of nights!

It's been a long day in this city and it seems like there is tons to do. So glad we changed our itinerary and allowed 6 days here instead of 3, I definitely think we'll use it all up well :)


Quotes
"Aw, I'm a heathen!" - Stephanie, our tour guide, on getting kicked out of a church in Italy for wearing a too-short skirt.

"The Soviets tried to bomb it, but that didn't work because it's a bomb shelter. Then, the Soviets tried to bomb it again. But guess what? It still didn't work, because it was still a bomb shelter." Stephanie, our tour guide, on Hitler's bunker