Dancing Hippos

 The title actually does have something to do with the post. They just happen to be separate events. See, I'm starting to be creative with my titles again!

This weekend was pretty spectacular. We stayed in town, and M was wonderful enough to organize a whole weekend full of awesomeness for us! Ever since Scandinavia, none of us have wanted to organize things for fear of repercussions (whoever organized things had to deal with the pressure of figuring everything out, and worry about people being dissatisfied.) We started out on Thursday by going to an Irish pub, Oscar Wilde. It was pretty fantastic... real Irish food, which just made me crave English Breakfast so badly. I think F and I are going to go back there one day during lunch and order the Irish Breakfast, to remind us both of home (oh yeah, F is British too). It was a pretty fun evening spent drinking Guiness and watching Liverpool come back with a hat trick from Gerrard!

Friday we essentially had two nights, it was crazy! We started out playing beer pong and cards in my friends room, which eventually got the cops called on us for noise (seriously? it was ridiculous..) Fortunately, that happened about five minutes before we were about to leave anyway, so it didn't really effect the evening too much! We then headed out to Weekend, a club that's on the 12th floor of a building with a panoramic view of the city! It was pretty sweet... the music left something to be desired. I can handle techno and electronic music, but this was just absurd. The same beat repeated over and over for at least 3 hours. And every once in a while there wouldn't even be a beat that you could figure out how to dance to! In any case, it was still fun :)

Saturday, J and I headed out to a museum we had to go to for class. We spent about an hour and a half trying to find the damn thing, even asking some women at a different museum where it was. Even with J's pretty decent German, we were subsequently given directions to the DHM, Holocaust Memorial, Topography of Terror Museum, and the GDR. We were looking for the German War Resistance Museum. Eventually, we found it. It was pretty cool, but only one room out of the 15 or so had English subtitles, so most of our time was spent practicing our German (I could make out maybe 2 or 3 sentences per paragraph!) After the museum, we stopped off to get some groceries and headed home. I decided to pass on going bowling because I'm trying to save as much money as I can! Also, I was really tired, and didn't want to change out of my PJs :)

Sunday, that would be today, we went to the Zoo!!! Now, I don't think I've ever been to a Zoo before. At least not since I've been old enough to remember it. I was really excited! We saw my two favorite animals - Lions and Pandas! And some giraffes, leopard cubs, gorillas, orangutans, crazy nocturnal animals, rhinos, zebras, tons of birds (they had pigeons in a cage... weird), seals and sea lions, hippos, penguins, and a whole bunch of other animals. It was awesome! We spent about 3 hours there, until it closed. Then I headed to Balzac (a coffee shop) to study, which is not that much fun.

This coming Thursday, we are headed out to Amsterdam! And then next weekend, I am hopefully going to Prague! I might have to go by myself to Prague, which would definitely be an adventure, but seeing as I can't find anyone else to go with me, I suppose I could always make it a fun adventure! I'm also no longer going to Vienna after the program :( I tried changing my flight, but the latest one I can get is December 15th, or else I'll miss Christmas! But, this has inspired me to figure out all of the things I need/want to do in Berlin since my time is winding down so quickly! So I sat down tonight with my Berlin book and read it cover-to-cover. And thus evolved my list:

Museums:
Pergamon
Neues Mueseum (modern art)
Holocaust Memorial/Museum (cannot believe I haven't done this yet!)
Museum of Contemporary Art
Jewish Museum
Photography Museum

Food:
Barcomi's Deli (German food meets NY deli)
 
Clubs:
Cookies
Doughnuts
(apparently I like food named clubs)

Other touristy stuff:
TV Tower
Flohmarkt @ Arkonaplatz
Jumbo Second Hand (vintage store)
Turkish Market
Antikmarkt @ Ostbahnhof

Only a little over a month to get it all done!!