This post is belated but still worthy of inclusion. Our last week in Berlin was spent at the apartment with my brother and his wife. Brian and Sarah arrived late on May 4th. Having prepared a long list of to-dos but still with class to attend in the mornings, I tried to organize some cool sight seeing for them. Steve and I waited to see several things so as not to double-up. We made a big German breakfast for them the following morning consisting of fresh brötchen (rolls), cheeses, jam, cherry tomatoes, wurst and 5 minutes eggs (the kind you place in the little cups and eat with a spoon right out of the shell). The 5-minute egg (hard white, runny yolk) is hard to master, as we found. During the week we had an array of outcomes: hard-boiled to snot-like whites. Luckily Sarah likes the hard boiled eggs and Steve will eat a snotty one without complaint. So…no eggs were wasted during the experiments.

Having arrived on a Friday, Brian and Sarah weren't alone in seeing Berlin the first two days. I didn't have class and Steve was able to free himself from translating. Saturday was mostly taken up by going to see a camper van that was for sale. Steve and I had already planned to find a cheap but durable one for our Europe trip. We borrowed Steve's friend's car (thanks, Daniel!) and drove outside the city. Long story short, we bought the van. Although it's a little rusty in areas and not the most beautiful on the outside, it was what we needed. The pop-up roof houses the bed and the little kitchen has a fridge box and two burners. No bathroom, but we figured we'd invest in a shovel instead. With that out of the way we were glad to be able to spend some time sightseeing with Brian and Sarah.

We went to the GDR museum and wandered around for what I considered a very long time. Sarah and I agree that interest in museums, no matter what they contain, has a time limit. I hit a wall just after the "create the ideal socialist citizen" game. The museum, however overflowing with information and things to see, was very interesting and actually fun. We sat in a real Trabant or "Trabi," the car of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). This car, made of Duroplast (resin plastic), was one of the only cars available to the people in Eastern Germany during the communist regime. However, the wait for one of these cars was more than 15 years; Steve's parents signed him up for one when he was born. Aside from the Trabi, the museum housed artifacts from life in the GDR in life-size ways. For example, half an apartment was authentically set up with everything from the socialist stations on the T.V to the Eastern German foods in the cupboard. A small movie theater showed a short documentary film and closets full of GDR typical clothes were available for rummaging. It was the most hands-on museum I'd ever been to and for only 5 Euros, not a bad deal.

We wandered up and down Unter den Linden, the famous street that ends at Brandenburger Tor and is home to many embassies and museums. A bottle of beer costs around 5 Euros on this street. Yikes. We took some fun depth-of-field photos with the T.V. tower in the background and ate Döners together. We did a lot of historical sightseeing at places like the Berlin Wall and the Topography of Terror. Another day we spent riding bikes around the city. We started by showing Brian and Sarah the closed Tempelhof airport (now a city park) and ended by grabbing some groceries (cheese, bread, wine and Haribo candy) and having a picnic in the gigantic Tiergarten. Side note: Sarah and I are addicted to Haribo gummy candy, with good reason. Almost every variety is shockingly delicious. The USA is seriously lacking in its supply of Haribo; You'd be hard-pressed to find more than gummy bears. Something should really be done about it.

Brian's birthday passed during his and Sarah's stay, which was convenient. Sarah and I started the day by trying to find Brian a specialty coffee to bring him in bed. We went out to buy groceries for breakfast around 7:30 in the morning. We tried to find a place that was serving coffee at that hour. If the store was even open, its espresso machines weren't on yet. We settled…and I mean seriously settled…for a watery coffee from a Turkish convenience store that was given to us in a very thin plastic cup: the kind that beer wouldn't even be served in at a house party. No lid either. We treaded gingerly back to the apartment and up the 8 flights of stairs. My coffee soaked hand passed the cup to my brother while we held back laughs over the happy birthday song. It was funny. He said it was good, but I think he was just being nice.

The final hurrah of their visit was seeing the public viewing of the German Cup Final, which was held in Berlin on the 12th between Dortmund and Munich. The stadium was sold out so Dortmund's club rented out an amphitheater and sold 18,000 seats. We took the packed metro to the Olympic Stadium station with the true ticket-holders and parted ways on the road toward the gigantic screen at the amphitheater. The atmosphere was alive with black and yellow-clad fans swarming like bees at the entrance. I felt like I was in the front of a punk concert just before the music started. I thought I would die but then a guy waved me through to be frisked by the female employee. After finding seats and buying a few beers, the game fired up on screen. From the outside you'd have never known we weren't watching the actual game. Crazy fans filled the standing-room only area just in front of the screen and never stopped chanting the songs of their club. Although you didn't have to be a Dortmund fan to buy tickets to the public viewing, you'd be stupid to wear Munich's red. Because Dortmund rented the venue, it was a sea of black and yellow. A Munich fan sat next to me among his Dortmund-loving friends but he kept his red scarf inside out so only the black side showed. Smart kid. The game was almost ridiculous. 5-2 Dortmund. A shower of beer from behind us followed each goal. I dared glance back once and saw the culprit: a hefty mid-30s guy who just couldn't contain himself. I don't think he even noticed losing his beer each time. It got so repetitive that we just put up our hoods whenever Dortmund was in the box.

In the end, we had a wonderful time during our final week in Berlin but were looking forward to the next adventure. We said goodbye to my brother and sister-in-law the morning after the game, wishing them well on their way to Sweden. Having picked up the van the day before, we drove it to Rodersdorf (the Willage) where we spent a good amount of time with Steve's dad fixing small issues and buying necessities. Steve and Frank had some father-son bonding over shop projects and eventually brought our little van up to speed. With newly made holders for the propane bottles and shelving altered for German-like organization, we were nearly ready. We spent a little more than anticipated on things like bedding, rugs, storage containers, bio-degradable soap, burners, propane, spices and plastic-ware but were not over zealous. We didn't have the space to be over zealous. After spending a few lunches with grandparents and leaving with borrowed pots and pans, we were ready to go. We left Saturday the 19th around 10 bound for Munich. Now that we've been on the road for four days, I'll be writing again soon to catch you up on Southern Germany, crossing the Alps and Lago Maggiore in Italy. But until then, I have a bottle of wine and an array of cheeses to attend to. J