Berlin

So the second most important phrase after 'do you speak english?' is "Rechnung Bitte" which essentially means 'check please'. We've learned over the past few evenings that waitstaif must be trained to only attend to you if you flag them down. Should you simply wait for them to bring you your bill, you'll be waiting until closing time.

D and I must look or act German because we've also leaned the phrase to ask for a menu in English and our waiters then tend to apologize to us that they didn't know.

It doesn't matter what you drink-- beer, water, soda, you pay just about the same for it. We paid 6 Euros (about 8 dollars) for water the first night we were here. Now we stop at a market, buy our own bottled water and buy the beer, brings new meaning to BYOB, I suppose.
The drink of choice for the Germans seems to be Red Bull and this Apple flavored ginger ale, I remember trying once at the Coke factory in Atlanta.

I am happy to report we just ate dinner and this is second day with out sausages. (D, however, was going through sausage withdrawl and had CURRYWURST for breakfast) I even managed to score some broccoli last night. Vegetables are as hard to come by here as they were in England, which is even harder to understand when you think about the fact that we're still in a growing season.

Reached a new record today and paid about $1.20 to pee in the subway station. We've been paying to pee ever since England and by and large it's been well worth it as the restrooms are super clean and we've never been asked for than about 50 cents. It seems to be a good system.

Yesterday we went on a city bus tour, hopped off at an arts and craft fair (which looked just like any American arts and craft fair I#s ever been to) and went to the Pergamom museum (Greek Antiquities). Then we did an East Berlin walking tour and tried to get into the German parliament building for a tour, but the line was too long and we weren#t gonna make it before the closed.

Today we went to the Egyptian museum, the main shopping district of West Berlin, Checkpoint Charlie, and walked a bit of the Wall. They've laid distinctive stones all over the city where the wall stood. There's only two sections of it still standing, one in it's origianl form and the other that's now utilized as a gallery where various artists paint murals on sections of the wall.

We leave here about noontime tomorrow for Prague (and yep, we stopped into the train station today at got seat reservations!)