Berlin!

I didn't take any pictures in Berlin but it was a great time visiting with Devin. We arrived Friday night and went out for drinks with her friends, Hannah, Katerina, and Tara. On Saturday morning we walked around the city and saw the Nicolai Quarter and then Alexanderplatz. Then we went to the Pergamon Museum and explored all the artifacts from the ancient Greek temple to the gates of Ishtar which came from Babylon (Iraq). We also saw lots of Islamic artwork, where calligraphy is used in the artwork primarily because painting human likenesses was not allowed. We then had a pizza called Pizza Johannes at the 12th Apostle near Friedrichstrasse. It was raining, so we walked around Hackescher Markt and then went to the Hackescher Hoefe to do some shopping. To warm up and dry off, we went to a really cool coffee shop called Cinema Cafe. We met a guy named Andres who was living in Australia and was a political refugee from Colombia. It seems we meet very interesting people everywhere we go here! After the rain stopped, we went to go see Devin's band, ItaloPorno, play at Raw Temple for a "Female Attack" party. There were a ton of people and she put on a GREAT show. Her band is on myspace at: http://www.myspace.com/italoporno

The next day, we had to head back to Heidelberg, but stopped in Leipzig, the second largest city in the former East. We had the incredible luck to show up right in the middle of an annual medieval fall festival complete with merchants selling leather goods and other medieval-themed products. We tried the Himbeer (raspberry pop, I think), Met (honey wine, like Irish Mead), and a really tasty hot spiced wine. We also saw the church, Thomaskirche, where Bach was a choir director and performed many of his most famous pieces for the first time. Both Berlin and Leipzig were incredible cities in their own ways, and I hope to spend more time in both places in the future.