January 7th! I love you. Check mark.
I had a great day. Can we say it people, a great day!! One that was filled with excitement the whole livelong day. Berlin is like a labyrinth, the history scales on to itself and over laps and intertwines and holy WOW, I just need a second.
I need a personal Berlin guide to sort all of this out for me. It would help me get through the 1000 options I have to learn about this incredible city, and decide what is best and most important to me.
Erik and I will be in Berlin for roughly a week, and I can already tell that the history portion alone could take months. Berlin is literally an abyss of history, and INTERESTING history. The kind of page turning, no sleeping, what happens next kind of history. And I personally cannot get enough of that.
Alright, back on track. So, today was great. Erik and I decided to go to museum island, and down town. We just wanted to walk and get a feel during the day, and then go back during the evening (when all the museums were free). They have Christmas time snow here, which just sits on your eyelashes and cheeks, each flake visibly different than the next.
My whole body seemed to be loving the decent weather... except my feet. I know I've written about losing a shoe. Well, I don't know if I managed to write about ruining my boots. The long and the short of it is- the souls came a bit loose, and now whenever I step in more than a cm of water and or snow, my whole foot is soaked. Trust me, it's the kind of wet that can really damper (haha!) anyones day. So my mom has been quite diligent about pushing me towards new boots. I haven't been overly eager to spend 80 euro (120 dollars) on an average pair of boots, only to have them be thrown away, or WORSE--- carried -- for the remainder of the trip. I've been highly practical, and put plastic bags in my boots!! BINGO, it works well, my feet stay dry, and I save some bucks. Considering I have two weeks of the cold left, it didn't seem like a bad option.
Well, today everything changed. Erik and I were buying some lunch from a cute little organic grocery store neatly tucked underneath the tracks of an above ground tram, and we found.. get this ALPACA wool socks! At a grocery store? Underneath the tram? YES!TWO pair for 6.95. This is a HUGE bargain, considering at most stores one pair runs a girl atleast 8 euro. SCORE, FIRST PUMP!!!
We both buy them. How could we not?!.. let me say, the pay off has been HUGE. My feet actually were a bit sweaty for the remainder of the day. I can not thank these oddly shaped animals enough.
As we leave the store, we look to our right and what do we see?! A dog in booties. Holy beautiful dog, with some great winter boots! The salt here is of a larger grain, and so they give their dogs booties to protect their paws. I died. I took probably 15 pictures of this dog. His owner was probably wondering who the crazy girl was that was talking to his dog and taking a bunch of photos.
I couldn't get over it! I probably made Erik wish he had a hearing aid so he could turn the volume off by the time we were done walking around. In the late afternoon Erik and I found an offical Berlin souvenir store. While we can't buy anything, it's always fun to look. Atleast at post cards, which of course leads to the other nicnacks. Well, this is where I crumbled. I bought my first souvenir. No, not a key chain for my mini back-pack, or a magnet for my fridge.
Get this..
A piece of the Berlin wall.
It's amazing! Some of the pieces were thousands of dollars, but the fist size piece that I got ran about 5 euro. The amount of history behind this piece of rock is so interesting and important, I could think of nothing better to take back with me. A lot of the wall had graffiti on it, and the piece of rock that I bought has a lot of different colors, and of course (!) the official BERLIN WALL card and serial number paper JUST in case I have some none believers in my presence.
NEATO. NEATO.
One of the most interesting, important, finite pieces of history, in MY home.........
Good day. Thank you to Alpacas for keeping me warm, doggie booties for bringing me joy, and a souvenir shop for allowing me to crumble.
ilove you. you're hysterical.
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