Berlin Baby

So this weekend took a group of Oles and assorted others to Berlin to watch Katie Henly run in Germany's largest half-marathon. It was the time of my life (that gets punny later in the blog entry.)

So Katie, John Morrow (living in France) and our token Brtish friend Catherine (diversity!) piled into a taxi cab-yellow rental car and left the 'Furt on Friday afternoon. We made it about 35 mins. before we realized we were going the wrong way, and once we found the right Autobahn, we were caught in some crazy Friday traffic. But! We ended up making friends on the Autobahn. Perhaps Germans feel friendly cameraderie when they are protected in their wagens, but there was plenty of window-down direction sharing going on on the A7. At one point some blonde chicks even asked us if we were going to Hamburg. They were looking to party.

The drive to Berlin should take 5 hours, but it took us 8. I only threatened to kill people once.

Once we got to the big B, things started rocking. We went to Zapatas for drinks and Da Da for fallafels at midnight and did some necessary drinking at the Siblerfisch bar. On Saturday, Katie gave us a professional tour of Berlin, reliving her summer career as a tour guide for the New Berlin outfit. She was spectacular: Surprising us with tidbits, pointing out where Katarina Witt lived in the DDR times, even making a 'fall of the Wall' story moving by mentioning that ''Dirty Dancing'' was playing on Nov. 9, 1989. We saw ecverything on our 4 hour tour, including Hitler's bunker, the memorial to Europe's murdered Jews, and the hotel where Michael Jackson hung his baby out of the window. I was so unprepared for how everchanging the landscape in Berlin was/is. I had last been there four years ago and it looked like a completley different city, although some things (the TV tower, the punky squats, the prostitutes wearing fanny packs) remained blissfully unchanged.

On Sunday was the big run and it was so much fun!!! We made signs, we yelled loud American things, we got stares from Germans on the route.... but it didn't matter! Katie did not die and in fact finished well within her goal time. It was inpiring.