Awesome evening

This evening a few of my friends and I did a couple of touristy things that turned out to be super amazing. First we met up at the Brandenburg Gate:

Yeah, it's big.

Horsies!

Me with John, two thirds of the IU crew.

These were all over the place. For a euro you could sit in one of the other seats and help the guy pedal while you rode around and saw the sights. Definitely going to have to do this when I have more time.

Next we went to the mall at the Potsdamer Platz subway station for food and because John needed an external hard drive. Yes, you heard me right. A full-sized mall at a subway station. That's just how epic this city is.

For food we went to an Italian place that, despite being in a mall food court, had some of the best pizza I'd ever eaten. I didn't take any pictures, but on display in a glass case out front were all their fresh ingredients, which was a common theme among the restaurants we saw. Why is this level of quality control never evident in the US?

Next we made our way to the Kulturforum, which is Berlin's Lincoln Center except so much more so. All the best museums and concert halls in the city (and probably all of Germany) are clustered within a couple blocks of each other, and the architecture and sculptures there and along the way from the train station are just amazing to look at.

We tried to go to the Neue Nationalgalerie (as most of the museums in town are free on Thurdays and open until 10) but today it was closed for some sort of invitation-only exhibit. Weird. It's a fantastic building, though, and we'll definitely be making a reappearance.

Oh look it's the Philharmonie.

We popped in to check out tickets but it turned out that the concert I was really excited about was the weekend I'm going to be in Hamburg. Not a bad tradeoff, all things considered, but it still would have been nice to see.

Anyway, we finally wound up going to the Gemäldegalerie (also free), which is one of the world's biggest collections of art from the 13th-19th centuries. This place had some pretty ridiculous stuff, including a study for Botticelli's Birth of Venus (just the Venus part). It turned out to be a bit of an overabundance of Weighty Old Stuff but there are plenty of other places to go for more modern work.

To finish off the night, we went across town to the western part of the Tiergarten (Berlin's Central Park) and visited what appears to be a Berlin fixture: the Schleusenkrug Cafe. This is a massive outdoor eatery and beer garden which has delicious examples of both food and drink. I finally had a beer served the German way, i.e. not as inordinately cold as it's served in the US so as to bring out more of the flavor. It works like a charm.

Here's Teddy and John, two more composers:

Prost!

This next one isn't the greatest photo but I wanted to include it so you dear readers could take note of the light level. This was taken at about 9:30 pm.

Yeah, we're just a touch further north here.

That's all from me for tonight, faithful readers! Sorry if it's been information overload, but I hope you're enjoying yourselves! I certainly am. Bis später!