Berlin and my birthday

I’m on my last school-planned excursion. All twenty or so of us have been staying here in Berlin. Here’s what we’ve done.

On the first day, we met up with a historian who gave us a walking tour of some of the major sites. Some culture things, Jewish stuff, etc. The tour was three or four hours and interesting, but we were all distracted the whole time by the Christopher Street parade, which everyone had fun taking photos of.

You see, Christopher Street Day is a holiday for gay liberation. It’s mainly an excuse for costumed or practically naked men to dance together on floats in the major European cities. And they did. We all thought the coincidence of our tour being on this day was pretty funny. The Germans don’t mind the parade, but that shouldn’t be a surprise when you consider that Berlin has a gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit.

The second day we had free time to ourselves. I went with a small group to see the Jewish, German history, and Egyptian museums and then browsed around Kaufhaus des Westens, the largest department store in continental Europe. (They have to say “continental” because England actually has a bigger one). It was big, but I wasn’t blown away–it’s just a store. We also got to see Berlin’s famous painted bears. The bears and the German history museum were the best parts of the day.

The third day we took a day trip to Potsdam to look at palaces and eat outside one of their universities. This day was devoted to seeing old buildings.

Yesterday, on my birthday, we took a tour of Germany’s Bundestag (what we would call parliament or congress). It’s an amazing, modern facility with a huge glass dome on top. We all climbed to the top of that for a great view of Berlin.

In the evening, I had my birthday dinner with a dozen or so people on the trip. Afterward, about six or seven of us (I’m a bit hazy on the details) went for drinks at a quiet, trendy-looking bar and then moved on to dancing at a very loud, but very fun club. I danced with Christa and the Lizes, had the honor of playing wing-man for Barron, and Clayton bought me some drinks. A truly great twenty-first birthday in one of Europe’s coolest and largest cities, I can hardly imagine an improvement, but it would have been nice to have all my old friends there. I’ll see them soon.

No sickness, no regrets, but I did wake up with a sore left foot. Cause unknown. So, that is why I’m blowing my last minutes in Berlin blogging at an internet cafe–it’s not comfortable to walk at the moment. I’ll get it checked out back in Würzburg if it isn’t feeling better soon.

The next big event will be the picking up of my mom and dad the day after tomorrow. Mary Ann, who will be flying out of Frankfurt, is sharing a train with me to the airport, so my parents may get to meet one of my good friends. They will also meet Christa and her boyfriend when we go to Munich. Our travel arrangements remain roughly as I outlined a few days ago. I think we may get a rental-car and deviate from our plans as we please. All the hotels are reserved except the one in Füßen, but it’s not a busy town.