I'm living in the park of an old castle! It looks like autumn, and it's December. Lucky me.
So, I went running in the park the other day, but the running part of it wasn't very successful as I had to stop all the time to look at all the mansions. Abandoned mansions! There are so many! I climbed over the walls and lurked around in overgrown gardens. I closed my eyes and imagined how it all looked like back then when ladies in their beautiful dresses went riding in the park, and old fashionable men walked around their homes, and I got quite romantical about it all ☺
But in 2007 I'm living with my Une, my friend from high school whom I haven't seen in many months, who's studying outside of Berlin, in Potsdam.
The last five days I've been taking the S-Bahn from Potsdam to Berlin in the morning and back again in the evening/late night/following early morning hours. Without any expectations I got on the plane from Oslo to Berlin in a rather not-thinking-much-about-anything state of mind, after 4 hard weeks in Trondheim. And what I found here in the capital of Germany was just perfect. I had filled my mp3 with happy Rock and Electronic to walk the streets of Berlin, and I've happily walked around ever since.
There's one area called Scheunenviertel filled with galleries(either artists here are rich, the rent low or the public byes a lot of art!!) There are these beautiful backyards sometimes with small cafes, just standing there open to the passing herd of people to walk in and take a look. See a tree, some random art, hear bird singing in the black Berlin afternoon. It's made for discovering and adventures.
Berlin is like a bag of candy where the pieces of candy are the many buildings, with their extremely different looks. It's like your walking around in this huge living moving exhibition. And then there's a more serious side. The overwhelming feeling I get when standing where the wall was built or where the SS officers questioned and tortured their prisoners. You're walking on historical ground in Berlin.
I went to the Topographie das Terrors, a museum under construction on the exact spot of the old headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst(SD), the Gestapo and the home of Heinrich Himmler. In text and photos you There you can see read the old letters written by the staff and officers about the treatment of prisoners. We read and we learn about the Second World War, but reading the actual remains of documents where it's written about the torture of humans in a language and with words just as if it was a normal day at work…its gruesome. And I hope that neither me, nor any one of you, will ever be able to not be affected emotionally by something like that.
Today I went to the two times a week marked in Kreuzberg, walked around amongst veggies, fruits, scarves, nannas, spices, bad quality clothes, bling-bling and low prices, with a cup tea bought from an old man from Turkey. I bought warm salty chestnuts, it was late and thus calm and some rain was falling and I told Berlin: "you look very beautiful tonight".

Some few souvenirs and recommendations:
Oranienstraße - in Berlin? You just have to go there
Kreuzberg - with the best shops and cafes
Scheunenviertel - artistic houses, people and feeling
The film museum
Deutsche Guggenheim
East Side Gallery
Al Kalif -my favourite restaurant

Soon adding , sorry for the tomatoe

take care, lots of love