Kate: Day 2

Before anything else, I would like to say that once again, I'm sorry, to Anna, Rachel, and Cierra. OK... so my day started at midnight when I woke up after crashing at around eight o'clock from the thirty six hours of being awake.  Upon waking up I first checked my phone, which said in big bold letters that it was indeed 7 AM, and I knew that we all had to be downstairs for breakfast at 8 AM.  I woke everyone  up in the room up to get ready. Rachel went to take a shower, Cierra and Anna were stalling in bed and we were just talking. Suddenly Anna sits up and says, "it's midnight." After a lot of apologizing (especially to Rachel, you know since she took a rushed midnight shower) we all went back to bed for another much needed seven hours of sleep. So, that was our morning and I still feel really bad about it.

When the real day started we had a really good breakfast with rolls, cheese, meat, hard-boiled eggs, and a german version of Nutella. Very good. Everyone still seemed a little groggy and not that excited for the two hour walking tour of Berlin. But, it all went well and we were ready to start our day at 9 AM.  The weather was nice. Although, it got pretty hot towards the middle of the day.

The first thing we saw was the Haupbanhof, a VERY large U-bahn station with tons of shops.  Fifteen minutes later our tour guide showed up looking like a young lean Einstein, really the resemblance was startling. From the Haupbanhof we walked to the Chancellor's Building, the Reichstag, Bundestag Buildings, the Brandenberg Tor, and The Sony Center, where we had lunch.

Then it was on to a boat tour on the Spree river. We saw the Berliner Dome, the TV Tower, lots of bridges with scary man faces on them, and lots of German bike riders. There were other, more important buildings, but it's late and I honestly don't remember their names. Also on the boat was an aggressive photographer, who took pictures and then tried to sell them to us. Johanna and Cady successfully photo-bombed Sheuerman and Ashley's picture.

Then we split up. Those who were tired could go back and rest headed for the hostel and five of us went to the Siegessaeule (the tower of victory, with the lady Victoria).  This was a longer trip than we expected. The walk just from the U-Bahn exit to the base of the tower had to be at least one mile, probably longer. when we got to the base of the tower we had to walk around to find a way to cross the street of a very wide, very busy round-about. Then we had to find the entrance, which we found after one red-herring, which was pretty good for us. Anna and I climbed to the top-285 narrow spiraling steps. It was crowded and we were out of breath but we did get some pretty cool pictures and a much better sense of direction. When we got down, we watched a procession (Ashley, Rachael R, and Cierra had already seen two) which called for stopping the already halted traffic on the round-about. It was quite an ordeal.

Now the fun starts, we had decided that we were not going to hike the five miles back to the U-Bahn entrance so we considered one of those biker carts, a taxi; we even attempted to figure out the bus system.  Ashley bravely asked two female citizens about hailing taxis and learned that we were making it way more complicated than it needed to be. So, we hailed a taxi that carried four so we split up and took two taxis back to the Haupbanhof. Terrifying taxi rides, with no rules regarding driving. We got on the correct U-bahn train-in the wrong direction. We were almost to the end of the line when we realized our mistake. We got on the right train and got home almost an hour late. We all went our seperate ways for dinner and reunited to find raging karaoke in the hostel lobby.  Everyone has either gone to bed or is here in the lobby planning for tomorrow. Guten Abend!

Kate