germany - day three

day three, finally!

on our third day in germany we left hamburg and headed for berlin for a weekend.

it was about a 3.5 hour drive that i'm pretty sure i just listened to justin bieber and slept the whole way to.

unfortunately, i'm not positive what this monument was, but it seemed like the center of berlin.

one of the first sites we saw was the old border crossing that divided eastern and western germany.

me, my cousin ramin, my dad and my aunt mitra.

next stop was the berlin congress building.

i can't say enough about how beautiful and amazing the architecture was on this place.

after visiting the congress building, we drove around downtown berlin and made a quick drive by at checkpoint charlie...

where apparently it is okay to dance like a crazy person in your exercise gear. (i.e. random jumping person with the headphones on.)

and finally, we stopped at the berlin wall.

or at least what's left of it, after the hasselhoff helped tear it down of course.

later, we took a stroll around the city and saw so many beautiful buildings; such as the bode museum. we didn't go inside because the line was terribly long but i would have loved to see the displays.

i love that no matter where we went there was always some type of street performer.

apparently there is no shame in rounding up the ol' recorder for a piping performance on a nearby bridge.

again with the street performers, literally.

this man would wait for the traffic light to turn red, jump in front of the stopped traffic, juggle his sticks, and then run around holding his hat out to the cars for payment. the craziest thing is, i actually saw some people tip him! anything for a coin these days i guess.

after a lot of walking, we decided to walk some more and headed to the turkish market nearby.

mind you, i don't have too many photos of this wretched place because i too busy fearing for my life. this was my least favorite part of the day. i am just so claustrophobic and this place was dirty, smelly, noisy, pushy and crammed, ick!

and of course, after walking all day long, we walked some more after we got back to our hotel in downtown berlin. walking around downtown reminded me of a mix of the vegas strip meeting mill avenue. it was really lively and busy. they had this cool display of bears all down the strip that represented the different countries. it makes sense considering berlin translates to "little bear".

no surprise here, my favorite part of the day was dinner. we went to a more traditional german restaraunt, probably similar to an applebees here in the states, but obviously WAY better. i had my first taste of german currywurst and even though i NEVER eat pork, it was delicious. currywurst (sausage) and pommes (fries), yummy!!