track our trek

we were sad to leave family, but we had to press on after a week, so we took an overnight bus from amsterdam to berlin...we arrived mid-morning & headed for the nearest tourist information office to find ourselves some accommodation. (in keeping with our usual luck, we landed in town at the same time as some major sporting tournament, so hostels were chock full of students and coaches for the week. but, also true to form, we lucked out despite the odds and found a great hostel in the middle of the city. i was impressed that after all these years, i can still understand quite a bit of german, even though i'm terribly shy about speaking it...we spent 3 1/2 days in berlin riding the train around and walking all over the place...we were staying not far from a long section of the berlin wall called the east side gallery... it's been covered with murals and graffiti over the years & it's really something to see! we were both surprised at how much smaller the wall seems in real life than it did in our imaginations...we walked alongside it for 20 meters or so before we realized we had reached it! of course, since it's no longer a double wall & most traces of all the military fortification are gone, it's a lot less imposing. we spent a long day at the jewish museum...an interesting building by daniel liebeskind with some pretty extensive exhibits. we also saw the holocaust memorial, the brandenburg tor, one of the major military gates in the wall. and we saw a couple of great exhibits on aboriginal dot painting and shona sculpture from zimbabwe at the berlin art center. the city is huge, and 4 days wasn't long enough to see much of it, but we hope to make it back one day to see more.
next we hopped on a bus to hamburg to see rahel, the friend we met in new zealand...she is back home in hamburg now after her several months of travel in south america, new zealand and australia. it was great to see her and meet her family and friends. they all took us in and showed us around beautiful hamburg. we were there for haborfest, the 818th birthday of the harbor, so there were lots of festivities going on along the waterfront. heike, rahel's mom plays the soprano sax in a rock band called auszeit, and we even got to see them in concert! very cool...and we had our own personal tour of the ernst barlach art museum heike runs next door to their house...we're looking forward to seeing the exhibit she's putting together on turkish art that will open in the fall. as usual, we feel so lucky to meet so many terrific people throughout our travels!