I ended up napping a touch, went to Starbucks, got a strawberry banana smoothie (bottled, sadly) and a blueberry muffin and spent a little over two hours online, some of it responsible, some of it play. Came back from that, lent Nate the computer, and went out exploring.

I took the U1 to its conclusion, Warschauerstrasse. The area's very different from where we're staying, we're in Charlottenburg, upscale, high end, that sort of thing. The neighborhood around Warschauerstrasse, whatever its name may be, is brick buildings covered in graffiti. Some of it's just graffiti, some of it is really cool street art, there's an especially impressive one of a humanoid form made up of smaller men, and it's lifting a hand towards its “face” which is holding one of the individual men in a different color. It may not sound good in writing but I thought it was pretty cool. I walked around there, saw some small coffee shops and things, lots of piercings, messenger bags, leather jackets, I think you're all getting the idea. Then I found a tiny little record store and wow. Really cool stuff, the sales were tempting too. I was this close to buying a Supertramp album for 2.50 Euro before I realized I couldn't get it home safely. Too bad really, they had a lot of awesome stuff, not only Bowie, Beastie Boys, Bob Marley, The Clash and so on, but even Fugazi which I certainly wasn't expecting to see in Berlin. I was tempted to pick up a CD, maybe this weekend I'll explore there some more. I also grabbed a dozen or so fliers for various parties, clubs and concerts this weekend.

Came back, picked up bratwurst, fries and a cherry coke for dinner in one of the stations. We met at 7 to go to a concert with Haydn, Vivaldi, Mozart and Arman. It was a small group, but they were very good. A beautiful concert hall, though it was almost comical to me how much it fit the stereotypical concert hall. Statues of Greek gods and busts of famous composers along the walls, literally. For the last few pieces they had a soloist on flugelhorn and trumpet, he played trumpet on The Festival of Venice and... wow. The playing almost sounded like a constant stream of air with occasional notes emphasized, like there was a constant sound and then a different instrument altogether hitting certain notes. He was obviously triple-tonguing, not sure if there was another technique to or not, but it was impressive. Suffice to say he was really good. As people were clapping and clapping and clapping, he even came out and improv'ed a short little encore on the same theme, which was really cool.

Walking back from that, we passed the Brandenberg Gate, read about the 1848 revolution, saw the lines marking where the Berlin Wall stood, and eventually came to the Holocaust Memorial. It's built on top of Hitler's bunker, and consists of featureless stone blocks at various heights. They look like graves more than anything else, at least to me. When you first enter they're short, but as you go further in they get taller and taller, and the ground dips, so that eventually they tower over you and you're “trapped” under them. It's meant to cause discomfort and disorientation, and though you can look left and right and see the streetlights pretty easily, it's still an impressive experience.

We came out from that, caught a bus back to the Zoo, and most of us walked back from there. I stopped with a handful of people to get kebabs, I got cheese and this time and wow. Excellent decision, it was absolutely delicious. And now here I am back at the hotel. Class in the morning.

Thursday, March 18th, roughly 11:50-12:05 PM local time