yaaay, FINALLY a free computer!! i'm in Interlaken, Switzerland, its been a very long time since Berlin, but i had already begun this update in my email, so i've just finished it and here it is, for your viewing pleasure:

(may 1-5), written in Munich, May 7th (i think)

For whatever reason the computers at this hostel will not let me load my blog site (it keeps crashing the computers) so im writing this to myself in an email until i can transfer it. Since i havent updated for three cities im going to skip my account of Prague for now and just talk about Berlin and Munich (where i am now) because they are fresh in my mind.
I arrived in Berlin on Friday, May 1st, around 3 pm. The hostel was quite nice, very hotel like though (but with techno music), but my roomates turned out to be all men in a very small, cramped room. two of them were dutch and thought nothing of sitting/walking around in their underwear, which were way too small for them, and, not to be mean, but one guy was quite fat and too old to be partying. they also had about 5pairs of jeans, 5 hats, 5 pairs of shoes, 5 shirts and 3 (im not joking) canisters of hair pomade each for a 4 night stay.I asked to switch rooms but they were all full. I spent the rest of the afternoon at the Jewish museum, which was very good. It was designed to disorientate; the floors were uneven and the walls came in at different angles. there was one room made out of concrete with no other light source than a small hole at the very top of room (which was like a tower), and this was meant for reflection on the holocaust. the museum was mostly jewish history as well as a few stories about specific familes or people who had suffered in the holocaust. i was in the main exhibit for so long that the museum closed before i could make it to the special exhibit on medical experiements and the perfection of the aryan race, which was too bad because i really wanted to see it. i found out later it was on loan from the Washington D.C. holocaust museum, but by that time it was too late to go back as i was leaving the next day. shame.
That night was very frustrating because after i went back to my hostel i tried to do laundry. long story short, it too about three hours, ruined a shirt which i then had to hand wash, i had to dry my clothes overnight and i read an entire book while i waited for it to finish washing (night, by elie wiesel). In the morning i woke up to disgusting man pigs in their underwear and asked to change rooms again. luckily, this time, they had a spot in an all girls room for me. were there still no available rooms, i would have left the hostel. by this time i had already cancelled my next two nights and booked in another hostel anyway. i would go into more detail about the disgusting man pigs, but im sure nobody wants to read about it so im going to leave well enough alone.
Once i finally got everything settled and had some overpriced hostel breakfast i headed out to do some sightseeing. now, this is going to be very non-detailed because i no longer have my berlin map and will have to fill in details/official names of places later. First i went to the square where they had the massive book burning in 1933. this is when university students, inspired by the Nazi regime, burned over 2,000 books stolen from the library. this was a cross-country event actually, but it is most well known in Berlin. in the middle of the square there is a memorial, a glass window in the ground looking in on a room full of white empty bookshelves, enough to hold the 2,000 books. nearby is also a plaque with an eerie quote from one of the authors whose works was burned, which translates to "where they burn books, they will one day burn people".

From there i went to the jewish memorial which is basically a huge area of different sized concrete blocks on uneven ground. i guess its very controversial, but i dont know why, and it seems to be a playground for children to climb in and teenagers to play hide and seek in.

Since the Ubahn was right nearby, i hopped on and went across town to the saturday Kollwitzplatz market. I'm a sucker for markets. I will always b-line straight for the main market in each city. This one turned out to be the best i've been to, with the sad exception that it didn't have a fish market portion. The market consisited of close stalls selling various food items and homemade goods. There were a large variety of meat vendors, jam, cheese, bread, etc. One of the reasons this market stood out to me was they had a fanciful cheese vendor. Here i found all my favorite fancy schmancy cheeses (clarines!) and was able to get a good recommendation on a new one. i walked away with half a (loaf? spindel?) of Coeur de neufchatel (yes, i wrote down the name!) for only around 2.50 euro. I complimented that with some smoked salami, .69 euro, and later bought some bread, .50 euro. Needless to say, i had a wonderful, cheap, delicous dinner later. (sorry about the font, i can't figure out how to get it back to normal). Also at this market i sampled some wonderful homemade pesto, which i would have bought if it didn't require refridgeration. I got away with day old pesto in Cinque Terre, but it was also a much smaller, much cheaper amount, and i didn't want to risk getting sick. I also got some fresh squeezed orange/bananna juice, which i drank with some really good, really filling cheap soup. The actual food that was being served there for lunch was so good and cheap, i wish i had been hungrier, but i guess my fullness ended up saving me some precious money! I purchased a nice green shoulder bag here as well, Makes me feel much less touristy and a little more natural, lol, so now i switch back and forth between that and my backpack.

When i finally pulled myself away from the market i went to go look at part of the remaining Berlin wall. It turns out the walk was a LOT farther than i thought and the piece of the wall wasn't the interesting spraypainted part. I know this makes me sound really shallow, but when you have a choice, why not see the part thats decorated? there was a tower that i could climb as well but by the time i trekked over there my feet were too tired and i didn't even bother. Since i had pretty much walked in a huge circle, i just finished up by walking right back to my hostel for a well deserved nap. When i got there i met my new roomate. thank god, it was someone cool who spoke english. It gets really lonely sometimes when you dont have anyone to talk to, or your room is filled with disgusting pig men in their underwear. I took a nap until around 5:00 and then headed back out to go to the Reightag building, which i was happy to find out was open until 8:00. After waiting in line for about 45 minutes, i was finally allowed in and got to see/climb the famous spiral walkway at the top. I got a lovely view of Berlin and can now claim fame to having done one of the more touristy things in the city that in reality didn't really mean that much to me. Hoorah! I also walked over to the memorial to those who had died trying to escape to the other side of the Berlin wall. At some point in the day i also went to the wonderful english section of a huge bookstore they have there and purchased a couple books i've been meaning to read - i'm very excited about this.

When i got back i ate dinner and then hung out with my roomates for a little while before we headed out for a quick drink. There was a bar i really wanted to check out, it was in a huge, broken down, spray-painted building and had looked emminentaly cool when i walked by earlier. I later found out it was an old squat house turned art exhibition house/bar/club/still squat house. Berlin has an obsession with fake beaches and behind the building was a huge area filled with sand and adorned with a wide variety of junk yard art, including large, welcoming letters (think 7 feet tall), spelling out "lust". there was a fire breather who came out at various intervals, and little areas where artists were selling their trash turned treasure wares. After a beer we went and explored the building. it was around 5 or 6 stories tall, still covered in spray paint on the inside, and we had to wade through a little trash. at the very top was another bar, this one much smaller and danker than the outdoor beach bar. we didn't stay, but instead checked out the art galleries on the lower floors. all of the art was a mixture between abstract, grotesque and political in nature. we ended up each purchasing prints from one of the more disturbing artists. My roomates wanted to call it a night around 1am, and so we headed back to the hostel, which was happily around the corner. I was checking out the next day, but we made plans to meet monday morning and go..... to the ZOO!!!

The next morning i got up and went to Sauchenhausen concentration camp. it was very easy to get to, a free (with my eurail pass) 50 min train ride and then a 20 minute walk to the camp. i just have to say that at the train station there was a little lady in a little food shop where i bought some currywurst, and it turned out to be the best i had my entire time in Berlin. anyway. Sauchenhausen is a very large camp. it was free admission and 3 euro for an audio guide, which i happily paid for. Unlike the other camps whose signs read (macht frei), this camp wasnt originally meant to be a standard concentration camp and its sign reads (..........). the camp opens up into the roll call area just past the gate, upon which is the tower where the ss would stand with guns overlooking the role call area. to the right are the special jewish barracks which, like in all camps, were of much worse condition than the rest of the barracks. they dont have the original barracks anymore, just a reproduction, because neo nazis torched them in 1992. I also saw the brick soviet prisioner of war barracks, guard tower, gallows ground (right in front of the roll call area), a memorial and finally the execution trench and station Z. i apolagize for being so brief, its just been a while since ive been there, ive been to two camps since (which are fresher in my mind) and this particular camp was the least impactful for me. also, my audio guide died (ironically... sorry, not funny) at the execution trench. Even without the audio guide i learned that in the execution trench they executed many people by shooting, as well as tortured prisioners in there. one interesting piece of information i learned in the museum there was that they would have a doctor approve a prisoner as being in good health right before torture was carried out. this was how horrifically methodical the nazis were, they had documentation which would then "allow" them to deal out an appropriate amount of torture. the trench was exactly how it sounds, build into the ground with concrete and wood, it looks like those trenches you see soldiers in, in war movies. Station Z was even more dramatic, this was one building that was a combination crematorium, gas chamber and execution facility. it was destroyed by the nazis before the end of the war, but the foundations are still there so you can see the individual rooms. there is a map provided labelling the rooms. the tiny one in the upper left hand corner was the gas chamber. unlike other gas chambers, this one is particularly little, an afterthought to the rest of the complex. next to that is the disrobing room, examination room, execution room, bodies room then the crematorium. prisoners were led into the building and then, after getting undressed, "examined" by ss men dressed up as doctors. this procedure was only put into place so they could identify the prisionsers with gold teeth or anything else of interest. the ones of interest were led into the execution room and made to stand against a wall with a hidden hole in it. an ss officer would stand on the other side of the wall and shoot a bullet into the back of each victims neck, and then they would extract the teeth. the prisoners never had a chance to understand what was happening, although im sure some had an idea. the rest were killed in the gas chamber. from there their bodies were piled in a room right before the crematorium to wait to be put in the ovens. like a good german system, it was quick, efficient and effective. the remains of the original ovens still stand.

This is all i have to report on this camp... i apolagize that it isn't as thorough as my other camp reflections, but it was the least powerful of all the camps i visited and now its been a while since i've been, so its no longer fresh in my mind.

When i got back i went to my hostel, grabbed my bag, and took the extra special, go in circles, grab the wrong train.. twice, way to my new hostel, which i later learned was only a 15 min walk away. along the way i got some yummy currywurst and pommes (thats french fries, to the layman), because i might have died of hunger had i not. my new hostel was fantastic, so clean, bright and FREE wifi. not a rip off artist hostel like the other one. I ran right back out again after relaxing for 10min, and headed to the east side gallery. this is the "cool" part of the Berlin wall, this is where all those wonderful, famous spray paintings are. the wall was indeed fantastic. i have pictures of my favorite paintings, so i won't describe them, but many are sadly being ruined by obnoxious taggers and tourists. there are many important political statements in those paintings, and in no other place did i feel like i was so completely engulfed by the Berlin.

As i mentioned before, Berlin is obsessed with building beaches. at the very end of the Wall, actually right behind it, is an outdoor club called yaam, that is like walking out of Berlin and into Jamaica. Its a 3 euro cover, but totally worth it. like the wall, the entire place is spraypainted, including the basketball court and skate ramp they have there. to the left are little stations where you can purchase curried chicken, and other such island fare and a little farther back a dj spinning reggae music. not dancehall. real reggae. the entire place is also filled with rastas, chilling out, eating, drinking, smokin the ganj. the whole thing. i think some of them probably just spend all day every day here. up some green/gold/red painted concrete steps is... the beach! complete with volley ball net, huge sandy area, hammocks and beach chairs. to the right is a bar and directly ahead, the river, along which you can sit and enjoy a nice cold beer. it was fantastic, Berlin really does everything. It is such an alive city. i can't think of a single other place that could have a fake caribbean beach and have it not be totally hokey.

The next day i met up with my previous two roomates and we went to the Berlin Zoo. It was cold out, but that was good because all the animals were actually out and not lazing about in the heat. we were there for about 3-4 hours. They had some wonderful animals, including a panda bear and many animals that we have at the florida reserve... something i always enjoy seeing. Even though this is not the biggest zoo in terms of area, it does have the largest number of species of any zoo in the world. so as far as i'm concerned, its the largest. so now i've been to both the oldest, and largest zoos in the world!

After the zoo we all went to checkpoint charlie, even though the other girls had already been there, they were kind enough to accompany me. We also went to the terror museum, i think its called, which is an outdoor exhibit where the SS headquarters used to stand. After that, one of the girls, Somer, broke off to do some tourist shopping, while Jenny and I continued on in search of some food and chocolate. Halfway back to the hostel i read in a book (in a shop) that the synogague i had wanted to visit, but missed was open later that day, so Jenny and I parted ways and I was lucky enough to visit the Synogague. Its called the Neue synogague, and it was basically destroyed in the war, the rest torn down later by the Jewish community, and then re-built. there is a lot more history, but i forgot it. From here i walked back to my hostel and got some schnitzel at a nearby restaraunt, i was too tired and hungary to even try and find a cheap sausage stand, so i bit the 10 euro bullet and ate well. The next morning i got up bright and early at 5am, and carried myself to the train station to visit Buchenwald and then Munich..... here is where my written journal begins. sorry guys, i'll transfer the pages onto here if im not too lazy tomorrow night.

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