A week-end of discoveries...

This week-end was a nice & interesting one. On Saturday, I first went for Brunch in an Italian restaurant, even if there was too much fish according to me, it was very nice.
At night, I went to the place of some guy from CouchSurfing for a small party, it was lots of fun! There was a Mexican guy who came with some specialties from his home land, first: fried bugs, yurk... I didn't try, I found it too disgusting. But he also brought nice dark tequila and showed us the real Mexican way to drink it: you take a quarter of a lime, put some of lime juice on your hand, add salt, lick your hand, drink tequila in one shot and bite into the lime. And this way, it's not burning. Then, I discovered a German way to drink vodka, with Ahoj-Brause powder, a powder with taste, sweet, designed to be mixed with water for kids, but here you take a bit of the powder, in your mouth, take your shot of vodka and mix powder & vodka INSIDE your mouth (cheap shaker :D ), it pops, it's funny! Then, they went for Russian Disco, I wanted top join but felt not really good and we had to queue before getting in the club which means it's full so I rather went home.

On Sunday, I wanted to visit Berliner Dom (the Cathedral) but had to pay €5, so well next time. I had a small walk in Museum Insel (Museuem Island) and ended up in Deutsches Historisches Museum (Museum of German History) which shows National History (and well also European History, they're often linked) from Roman times to 1994. It was very interesting, and gotta admit that German & French Histories are sometimes linked, especially History from my home region which had been the target of wars between the 2 countries.
After that, I decided to go to cinema, i first wanted to go & see Rapunzel (thinking a cartoon might be easy to understand) but it's plaid only late morning/early afternoon so I chose The Next Three Days, it was very nice movie, I really liked it, except one or two times when everybody was laughing because of something funny I didn't get...
It was a very nice week end, and here are some pix of Berlin since the beginning of 2011.


== Greetings from Berlin==

Szczecin, Poland

This week-end, I went to Poland. It was a country I wanted to visit for a long time, I had several attempts to get there while I was living in  Czech Republic (and so not that too far away) but never made it. So for my 1st week-end out of Berlin (Xmas trip to France doesn't count) I went to Szczecin, not very far from the border, used to be German, 2 hours by train, perfect.
I took the train around 8am on Sat morning and arrived there around 10am. And when I got controllled I realised I've been screwed, the lady controling my ticket asked me why I had not bought the Brandeburger ticket for 10€... well because I didn't know, so I paid 55€...

When I arrived, I took the tram and met J., my great host for this wonderful week-end. We started with a breakfast, before going to visit the cute city centre, she wanted to have me taste a Polish speciality, but the place where they make the best ones was closed, so we head off to a bakery, they had poppy cakes! I used to eat tons of this while living in CZ but never found them in the other countries I visited/stayed in afterwards.
We had quick lunch at McDonald's, I kinda like to try McDonalds in different countries, good thing in Poland: they got ice tea!
And then we continued with the visit and ended with shopping! And there was a shop of Bata shoes! A shop in which I hardly can enter and leave empty handed (which is not in Germany), plus it was sales, so I bought a beautiful pair of pumps! ^^

After the shopping, we went home, she cooked me a nice Polish specialty boiled potatoes with "medalony", some meat with oinions and spices, that was very tasty. After this, the party started, some of her friends came by, I was surprised to surprise them by drinking pure vodka. We had a nice time, and ended up in a great night club. The club, Cityhall, was free for ladies before 10pm, and it was a special night with a famous DJ coming, and as I love electro music that was just perfect. Except that I got suddenly completely tired and it was quite frustrating not have the power to dance on such a good music. We got a great night!

The next day, we slept late, and when I woke up, I met her Italian flatmate, and we were like: but we know eachother, don't we? I had met briefly met him last year in Oslo for NYE party, he hosted her in Bergem (Norway) this summer and now he's sharing her flat... the world is so small! I love those moments that are likely to happen thanks to CouchSurfing! We had a slow start, had a good breakfast and went for a walk.
We took a shortcut, quite isolated, so there was still ice, and my sneakers were slipping like hell, I tried to walk on the muddy side, was fun, and we met a dog, it was sitting on my side, as he wouldn't move I started to try to cross the icy way to get to the other side, when it started to bark at us and chase us, with something aggressive in its eyes, I'm usually not afraid of dogs, but there I paniked a bit, and wanting to kinda run away, I slept on the ice and fell, kinda hurt me, nothing serious, but I still feel some pain... Well, I'll survive ! :D
Then, we crossed a nice park, walked in the centre a bit, stopped for an ice-cream and it was already time to get home, stopping by the shop to buy a bottle of Polish Wodka! :D

It was an awesome week end, the city is very nice, there are lots of parks, lakes and it's not very far from Baltic Sea, so might be even more beautiful in Spring and summer... and for sure I'll go back!

PHOTOS


==Greetings from Berlin==

Why oh why?!

I wonder why my online dictionary is always displaying an ad for the shoes website Zalando! I can't help sometimes clicking on it, and I guess I'll soon buy those wonderful pink heels... well once I read (and understood) the conditions for returning or exchanging and got my January salary.
The ad engine of the site must be a kind of mindreader... On my own laptop, I would understand since I might from time to time visit shoe selling websites, but come on it's my work pc!


==Greetings from Berlin==

East Side Gallery Part II

About one month ago, I talked to you about the East Side Gallery, this part of the wall turned into an open air art gallery since it's been painted by artists.
I went back yesterday to see the part i had no time to see and discovered that actually, in 2009, for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, they called all the artists who painted in 1989 to come back and paint something new and almost all came back.

But better than words are pictures.

==Greetings from Berlin==

Play, Berlin

Yesterday night, I went to play Wii at Play, a Wii Bar (and it seems they also have Kinekt now). It's a large bar with a TV screen and a Wii Console at every table.
I love the concept! Yesterday, we were around 20, so we split into two tables, on my side, with my mate we won tennis (more thanks to the badness of our adversaries than thanks to me), I proudly lost at Mario Kart (well, I ain't got my driving license ^^ ) and I annihilated some guy at Boxing !!! :D
I also tried their cocktails (of course), my Mai Tai was not bad at all! ^^

For some reason, we did not have to pay (the guy organising the event told us it was free for us) but the prices are 8€/h for a 6-person table or 19€/h for a 12-person lounge (for once I would pay to play games instead of being paid to play ^^ ). And I was thinking, that could be an original idea for a date, instead of the classical bar/restaurant/moovie (I sometime try to think about original stuffs for a date in case one shows up ^^).

There are two Play in Berlin, we were at the one on Alexanderstr and the other one is attHauptbahnhoff (central station).

==Greetings from Berlin==