Breakfast was pretty good, I had bread/meat/cheese and LOTS of fruit. Oh, and some yogurt, which I hadn't had in ages. Not because we haven't been in countries with great yogurt, more because I'm a little wary of what people call “good” yogurt versus what I actually like. I've tried lots of new food, I figure I'm allowed one or two.

Took a nap after that, then class, which was mostly a discussion of Berlin and Berlin history, along with a little more on this theme of “who owns art?” that we've had going on constantly since Egypt. We got our week passes for the public transit and got some time off for lunch. Swaffie and I wandered, amused at how we're polar opposites in appearance. We saw lots of cool little stores, a big church with a nice playground, Berlin is just a really cool city to walk around in. Some old guy who was probably crazy swore at us, I only caught “die Scheisse Deutschland,” but it was clearly directed at us, especially since he kept watching us after we passed. That was odd. Eventually we went to a little grocer's nearby called Kaiser's, picked up some sandwich stuff, orange juice and an apple, came back to the hotel and had lunch. There was a little bit of snow on the way back, which we certainly haven't seen in a long time.

After lunch we waited around for a bit and then headed on the buses to the museum. Somewhere between class and here, I lost my pass. NO IDEA. I had put it straight into my wallet. I tried to tell Denny after the first short stop and he laughed, saying “you had me there for a second.” He honestly thought I was messing with him. So I spent the rest of the bus rides in horror of ending up having to pay some enormous fine (they had told us all about it this morning), but I got away with it. We went to the Pergamon Museum, the lady selling us tickets told Denny that “this is better, because we have the real thing” when he told her we had been to Pergamon.

Yeah, sometimes people are like that.

The museum itself was truly impressive. The ancient gates were incorporated into the doors so that when you walked through a doorway, you were going through one of these gates. Upstairs they had a bunch of statues, amphoras, and other things only recently recovered from Russia that had been taken in WWII. Truly beautiful stuff, and even a little bit of mythology mixed in. We had been hearing all about this in our art discussions, so it was cool to see it. Maybe the coolest part for me was a small Babylonian section, seeing as I know so little about Babylon. The art style reminded me a little bit of Aztec art, which was surprising, but it was definitely there in some pieces.

After that we tried to go to the Egypt Museum but were probably 30 seconds late, they have very specific entry times and the group before us got in. Meh, whatever. John, Clay, Allen, Swaffie, Nate, Brenna and I wandered a bit, briefly went into a Catholic church being renovated. Some idiot had drawn a pentagram with 6s and “Satanus de Angelus” near the door. Inside it was beautiful despite the work, lots of paintings, though definitely in that sort of creepy old Catholic style of everything being pain and suffering. There were a couple that weren't, but the majority were. No offense to Catholicism, I'm just saying. We saw a GORGEOUS fountain with Poseidon and a bunch of other creatures around him, absolutely beautiful work though it wasn't flowing just then. Eventually we passed some stalls with some guys selling Soviet-themed stuff, hats, flasks, pins. John got a flask, Swaffie and I both got hats. WARM and comfortable. Wow. I probably got ripped off at 15 euro, but that's life, and it's actually practical. I took the pin out and now I can wear it here and in Norway, not to mention back home (pin in, obviously).

Eventually we were done and headed into the subway (called the U) to come back. We got these delicious chicken kebabs, 2.5 euro and huge and oh so tasty. I had to buy a ticket, which was... intimidating. I walked into this little room and of the two women running the counter, one is in this huge argument with a woman trying to do... something. I'm not sure what. That went on for several minutes, and when it eventually became my turn, I got the woman who was arguing. I was afraid she was going to be pissy with me, ignorant tourist, but I just said I'm a tourist and I need to get here and she told me the route (we had already figured out the route) and yes, I could buy one ticket for the whole thing and it was 2.10.

So we got that taken care of, got the first part of the route down fine, heard a guy play guitar and sing in an Irish accent on the train (he switched to British when he spoke, though). We got to the transfer JUST as a train was pulling out, and Nate DASHED us onto the train, holding the door long after it had meant to be closed. Here two guys were performing, one playing guitar and singing, another playing soprano sax. This was actually pretty awesome, the sax guy was really good and we all liked the song. I gave them 70 euro cents, and then Nate figured out we were on the wrong train. Well, yeah, when you hardly pay attention to what you're boarding. So we got off and got on the train going the right direction, headed back, walked back to the hotel, and here I am. Other than the whole losing my pass thing, definitely a good day.

Tuesday, March 16th, roughly 7:40-7:55 PM local time