Alemania

Flew into Berlin on Wednesday night and gave a call to Paul's brother-in-law's sister Anette. Amazingly she says "oh you are at the airport, cool, we will pick you up in 15 minutes." Ten minutes later and she and her husband, Sebastian, are driving me out to an Italian restaraunt for dinner! The hospitality continues. I truly wasn't even planning on staying with them but they insisted so I stayed two nights.

As you can probably imagine Berlin, and Germany in general, is in a tizzy over the World Cup, my favorite moments so far were France v. Korea and England blowing their lead to Sweden (we watched this game in Tallinn with a mixed Swedish-English crowd). Coming into Cologne today (Germany plays Argentina in an elimination quarter final) the place was quasi-frenzied, and it is only 12:30 PM. Given this, it is a pretty interesting time to be here, oddly enough I was in Japan for the last WC (some anti-soccer toilet humor here-WC is a universal name for the john here).

Back to Berlin yesterday...I decided to vist Phillipp the used toy monger in former East Berlin. I was not disappointed. Onkel Philipps SpielzeugWerkstatt is a VERY unique place. He got the space cheap after the wall fell and has been expanding ever since. It has a really wacky-some very odd black dolls amongst other oddities-East German toy museum next to 3 rooms packed with kids toys and books, new and used. The place is a real curiosity and people drop in all the time. I spent most of the day just hanging out there and then Philipp loaned me his bike and I went biking throughout Eastern Berlin. Because of the WC the entire avenue where the Brandenberg gate is closed off with kiosks, large screen TV's for viewing the games, stages for live music, etc... So I was lucky having a bike going from the B-Gate to the monument to the Red Army and their historic defeat of German Fascism-up there with the other moment that moved me emotionally, the Hermitage-to the Siegessäule, the Bundestag, and a hell of a lot more! Quite a day. Great food, sunny and warm, saw some great Brazilian and Argentinian music on the street and on stage and had one of the best sandwiches-serrano ham and cheese on a ciabatta-from a small spanish cafe, that I have ever had.

The next part of the trip is visiting with Paul's sister and her family near Cologne. I was going to take the hitchhicking website route but the shinny 200 MPH ICE train caught my eye and I couldn't resist. Arrived here in mid-day to the impressive Cologne Cathedral and lots of obnoxious WC fans. Go Argentina, veneceremos!