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!)

Sprechen Sie English, Bitte

spre ken zee English bit-uh. Which translates to "do you speak English, please", a constant refrain of the last few days, though I have tried to order food in German and talk to ticket agents in German, other than the above phrase, I'm pretty limited.

Arrived in Dusseldorf Friday morning. Actually we arrived in Weeze, a very very small town about 50 miles from Dusseldorf and then had to figure out how to get from this small town into a bigger one so we could start our train ride to Berlin. Fortunately the shuttle bus driver new I meant train when I said "bahnhof" and took us to the train station, which had no attendant, just a ticket machine. Since we had our railpasses we decided just to get on the train (even though all our instructions said the passes HAD to be validated before travel) and get off at the first big station to find someone.

PIcked up a quick sandwich at the station and then off to Berlin on a highspeed train (speeds reaching up to 250 KM/h): However, although we had our rail passes we didn't have seat reserevations, so had to stand for the first 90 minutes (of a 4 hour trip) Got to Berlin about 8pm and ate dinner at a local rest. (where mercifully the waiter spoke English) and collapsed into bed.

Most everyone speaks at least some English here,which makes it easier to travel, but makes me feel a little silly, as educated as I am to not really know another language. I was even panhandled bilingually today. We were approached by a panhandler in the rail station and just nodded and said "no deutsch". Not to be out witted, said panhandler promptly switched to panhandling in English!

We had to find a different hotel this AM, so left our bags at the first hotel and wandered the neighborhood. We are staying in the "Prenzleur Berg" session of east Berlin, near Alexander Platz. We grabbed a currywurst and fries from the oldest sausage stand" in Berlin (at least so says Rick Steeves)-- family run for over 60 years (interesting when you consider we are in the heart of East Berlin, but I guess even the Soviets wanted their sausages). A currywurst, btw, appeared to be a fried sausage with a curryied ketchup over it.

After lunch, grabbed our bags, checked into our new hotel then headed out to the Jewish Museum, since it is open late and we had already blown the morning. Germany is apparently in the midst of a continued effort to reach out to its Jewish population and the museum is filled with a reparation rhetoric that seems very outdated by American standards. IOW, I imagine to some German teenagers it matters that their classmates are Jewish in a way I don't think it has mattered in the US for a few decades, if not longer.

Then, dinner in a traditional Bier Garten (beer garden)-- lots and lots and lots of picnic tables (maybe 100) under blinky lights with beer, pretzels, potato salad and , yep you guessed it, sausages!

Haven't yet got a plan for tommorrow, but weäre here (at the park plaza inn) until Tuesday AM and then off to Prague.