ex-Berliners

Still on the train to Copenhagen by Hamburg, and sleepy since we woke up before five.

In Berlin, we stayed at Eleanor’s house….all the time.

We saw her, her kitchen, her living room, and her vacationing housemate’s bedroom-suite, where we slept and pretty much spent all our time in Berlin, since Annalise had a minor cold and I had tons of work. Eleanor is a casual acquaintance of mine from Carleton, ‘0myyear. She went to the same publishing institute that Annalise attended in Denver. She moved to Berlin with her boyfriend, after they lived in Denver for about a year, and upon arrival, he moved to Dumpsville, population him. Now she goes out with another person, German, and is an editor for an English magazine called Ex-Berliner. We think that’s pretty cool. Anyway, she was incredibly hospitable, giving us keys to her apartment and an enormous room to stay in, which we did.

It’s a shame that we didn’t really get to see any of Berlin, but that’s how it goes sometimes. And it’s not a place we could have come close to covering in two full days anyway. And we actually did get out, so it’s not fair for me to say that. Eleanor lives in what appears to be the hippest place in Berlin, like Bucktown with a can of spray paint. We went to a couple cafés and a first-rate falafel/shawarma place, and it was a new experience to stay in a part of a major city that was not old and visited, but instead rather lived in.

By the way, the Berlin toilets are wacky and unlikable. They don’t have water, it’s dry and bare. When you flush, water mercifully arrives to whisk any droppings from the platform and down the hole, though Eleanor says sometimes the aid of a brush is necessary. Gross.

Staying with Eleanor is kinda like the beginning of the end for us, mostly because we knew her already and it was really comfortable and easy to be there. Now comes more people we know to the north (via Hamburg.)

Only a few pictures. Annalise wishes we would have taken some shots of her falafel plate, if just as proof that we left the house.