Riots and Terror and all things Scary...

Hello everyone!

Ok, so clearly, you wanna hear about the riots. Where to start?? Well, I met Marty (the psycho hostel guy)downtown around three and we went from there to Kruezberg where the whole riot was supposedly happening. When we got there, a few people were waiting to meet us. Notably Andrew (the Englishman who, by the way Heather and Ray, looks like Chris), Mark (an Irish boy... not a red head) a Canadian girl, an Aussie boy and two Italian girls. On first glance, this whole anti-capitalist riot looks like one big excuse to drink in the streets. People were selling beer off the side of the road (anti-capitalist, my ass)and everyone was getting pretty damn drunk. So, until about 9, it was just one giant street party. At that point, my group and I wandered into a bier garten and sat down for a while by a heat lamp (very cool). After about an hour or so, the owner of the place came to tell us to move, cuy it was getting pretty rwody outside and soon they'd be throwing things over the headge right onto us. So we moved. When we fuinally left the bier garten, we went back into the street, where the full-fledged riot had broken out. People were throwing bottles around, fighting in the streets and police were EVERYWHERE trying to subdue them. I am not too sure whether it worked, cuy we got the hell out of there. Marty wanted to stay "I have itchy palms, I need to see some action" What? Clearly, he's out of his mind. Anyway... the only other big adventure of that night was that I took the U-Bahn all alone and didn't get lost. Whoot Whoot!

Today, I went to see the Topography of Terror. Very cool. It's a display right behind the remains of the Berlin Wall in the basements of old Gestapo and SS headquarter buildings. It recounts the story of the whole Nazi regime, how the war started and the horrors inflicted on people in concentration camps. I got an English audio-guide to explain it to me (it was all German) but i actually couldn't listen to it all. It was sooo gruesome and disturbing that I sometimes had to skip sections.

After that, I went on a walking tour around Berlin. It was 5 hour walking tour that pretty much took me ALL OVER the city. Among a whole heck of a lot of other things, I saw Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg gate and the memorial to holocaust victims. All very cool things, but they really need pictures to explain, so you'll just have to wait till i get home.

Tomorrow I'm off to Hamburg, where giant condoms await. My only regret about Berlin is that I have still not been attacked by a wild boar like Patrick promised. Oh well, I'll have to come back!!

See you later!!

Steph :)
xxx