Final Day in Berlin
We spent a long day walking in Berlin on our last day. I kept being surprised how long it took us to walk around, but I love walking in strange cities because you wind up finding things you would not discover otherwise.
We left from our hotel determined to make it across Kreuzberg to Little Istanbul and then on to the little airport where the Berlin airlift happened. It took us a while to get to Little Istanbul but we found a wonderful Turkish bakery (lovely rugelach, and good sesame rolls stuffed with spicy onions and potatoes). I tried to buy some cherries and nectarines from a street grocer, but I couldn't understand what the nice Turkish woman was telling me and I think she was gesturing that I needed to weigh it first or something but I couldn't figure it out. So I left the store without paying - shoplifting cherries in Belin. Embarrassing but true.
We walked on and came to a beautiful little cemetery, toured a church, and had a good picnic lunch we bought from a market hall. We did a little shopping in the neighborhood and Annabella and I tried on shoes from a store she had heard about in Seattle. Unfortunately I couldn't quite get shoes that fit... but we did talk to the woman helping us, and she is DJ in Berlin, who's boyfriend called her during our set at the Wassermusik festival and told her about us. So we gave her a CD and marveled at how small the world is...
We did find the airport with a big monument to the people who lost their lives during the airlift and went into the airport. It was a time capsule from the 40's basically... really nice to see old lettering on the restaurant that has not been changed and the ceilings not dropped like they would have been in the US. Apparently, the airport is one of the oldest in Europe having been used as an airfield since 1908, rebuilt by the Nazi's to be the largest in the world, and then used as the airfield for the Berlin airlift in '48.
We took a taxi to across town to the Tiergarten neighborhood and toured the Kathe Kollwitz museum... three floors of her beautiful, sobering lithographs and woodblock prints. In the same neighborhood was a beautiful former cathedral that was bombed out during WWII - they left it as is, and built a new sanctuary next to it in 1960 - really interesting place - picture above -

We took the subway after this up to Checkpoint Charlie and toured the little historical museum there. The history of the wall and the repressive East German regime was very interesting. Reading about the GDR you can't help but think about the tactics the US is using under Bush in Iraq and in the US - horrible torture, wire tapping, listening to phone conversations, etc. We aren't as free as we think..

We kept walking after this and had dinner at a little restaurant named Henne - they have been open since 1908 or something like and serve chicken. A 1/2 Roast chicken is the only thing on the menu - but it was very good, particularly after walking forever during the day. That was about it -- the next day we left for the airport at 5 AM for the long flight home to Seattle.
It was a really fun trip - and thanks to Andy, Annabella, Matt and Felix for a wonderful time. We all got along great, played a great show at the festival, and had lots of laughs.
Auf Wiedersehen!

Final thoughts on Berlin
Berlin is a huge, sprawling city. We must have walked 10 miles easily each day. It's a city full of grand plazas, great architecture, vibrant culture, great public art, beautiful museums, and lots of people smoking cigarettes.

In fact, I'd say the inability to get a breath of fresh air was one of the things I liked the least about the city. We were there during an incredibly hot stretch (90 each day) but the combination of diesel cars and trucks, hot, still air, and people smoking cigarettes everywhere gave me a headache. If you don't smoke, the smoking bans being put in place in Seattle, San Francisco, the UK, and elsewhere are a great thing.

We did a great show at the house of culture in Berlin on Saturday night. We had a pretty big crowd of probably 700 people... and the Berliner's seemed to dig it.
We were all pretty keyed up for the show and the energy was really high on stage. We sounded really good thanks to a great, professional sound crew who made it all really easy for us. And a personal highlight for me was getting to play on a riser behind Andy, Matt and Bella. My dream come true!
We were called back on stage for an encore and to do a bow which was really nice... we all just want to be loved right?

After the show, we boarded a boat to go to the opening show for the PopDeEurope festival. That was fun and at one point at a spot where you could see a big stretch of the Berlin Wall against the river some guys were setting of a great fireworks display which was kind of surreal. We wound up bar hopping a bit in the Kreuzberg neighborhood which was fun and we stayed up way way way too late. There isn't a closing time for bars in Berlin so people stay up literally all night into the morning having fun. We joined the locals and took over a little funky bar that was playing good music and danced and messed around until the wee hours of the morning.

check out the photo page for some photos before the show. I did have a friend from Stockholm who took some photos of us but we haven't seen them yet...

More Berlin

Today we worked for a while on getting schwag ready to sell at our show... which meant lots of sitting around and signing and stacking CDs and then taking them over to the venue where we handed them off to be put on sale. We also presented the woman who booked us with the quintessential gift pack from Seattle: Coffee from Caffe Vitae, chocolate from Theo Chocolates, and a tshirt from Dick's Drive in. It says Seattle, no?

We also spent a good deal of town wandering around East Berlin - and getting horribly lost, before finding the subway way out to East Berlin to meet my friends Andy and Paul from Stockholm who were taking photos way out at a bathing place on the river Spree for a travel article they are working on. We dragged them back to the House of Culture for the Don Tiki show which was really good. Tiki show tunes with dancing Polynesian girls and great music.
Tomorrow we do our show followed by a boat ride to another festival up river.

Check out photos from the trip here: http://picasaweb.google.com/chodosirvine/BerlinTripWithLushy

Baby Got Barack in Berlin

We attended the huge Barack Obama rally in Berlin yesterday. There were hundreds of thousands of people on the street that leads away from the Brandenburg gate. We were well back from the stage where he was speaking but could see a huge monitor with him speaking. I don't think I've ever seen a larger, more well-behaved crowd.
The enthusiasm for Obama was amazing... random people on the streets have talked to us about politics... everyone seems wary and very tired of Bush and they all seem hopeful and excited about Barack. Forget the bromides McCain is laying down about Barack's speech here. Clearly the world is ready for a change in the US. McCain is not the answer- he would have drawn maybe thousands here instead of nearly a million for a 15 minute speech.

Ich is a Berliner!

An uneventful flight to Berlin was allowed by following the sun over the top of the world. We arrived 10 hours later in Frankfurt for a layover, and then on to beautiful Berlin.
It's always weird spending an entire day not sleeping and continuing on as if a night's sleep has not been missed, but it is possible.
Anyway - as you can see if you view the first picture in this web album - I am a Berliner.