Ich Liebe Berlin

Last weekend I went to Berlin. The plan was somehow hastily conceived, and until Thursday night i was not even sure that we are going. But than we made up our plan and as usual, drank until early morning to celebrate eveb before the journey.

We started our trip with Bojana on Friday 3 pm. We went to Berlin for 25 euro with a car we found from Mitfahrtzentrale. This is a rather cool concept, both economically and ecologocally: drivers who would otherwise travel alone offer places in their cars for money online, driving like this is quite popular in germany. There is even a bulgarian site for this, but it has not too many offers right now.

We arrived in Berlin around 10 pm. Bojana found a relative of her aunt who lives in Berlin - Köpenick, Liljana Schmidt, and she was nice to allow us to stay at her place for several days. She was a really nice old lady, probably because she has worked in a University and enjoys young people. Her apartment block is a bit similar to those in Mladost or Ljulin when it was first built in East Germany, but it was amazingly well repaired, painted and maintained. It shows that even "panelki" can be a nice place to live, if one puts some effort.

After this we went to a Frank Brettschneider minimal party in the centre of Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg, which was quite cool and full of people from all over the world. We stayed until 4 am and then took the 1 hour trip back home. Berlin is quite large and spread out city, but the transport grid is amazingly effective 24 hours !

The next day we slept until 12 am, had a nice breakfast with Liljana Schmidt. Then we visited a nice Dali exhibition, which managed to surprize me quite good with many things i have not seen before from Dali, and i have seen quite a lot from him. Afterwards we met on Unter den Linden with Jana, Gopeto, who had taken another car form Darmstadt, and Tihomir, who like a real hippy hitch hiked to BErlin. We drank some beers and then found a nice drum and bass party for the night. We thought we knew the address, but felt a bit lost, until a nice man took us in his car and drove us to the party to save us the time. The party was good, full untill 6 am, and much cheaper than back home in darmstadt. We went home at about 6 am, Bojana, Tihomir and me. On the way we met Beni and Tittilein, or whatever, some nice quite drunk local people from Fridrichshein. We chatted with them and they invited us for a bottle of wine at 7am in their homes, quite nice. We went home finally at 9 am, but we still did not sleep, but had a nice big breakfast with Liljana.

Finally we slept until 3 pm or so, and than went to the Bode Museum, which had a nice medieval/byzantine collection. We met some other bulgarian guys there, Stojan and Miro, some friends of Zlatka, and had some beers with them. Afterwards we found several cool party offers even for Sunday night, but we were too tired, and just strolled around Potsdamer Platz and the Sony center, the flashy part of WEst berlin made of steel and glass

And on Monday we went back home, again with a mitfahrtzentrale. We had planned so much more to do, like visit the Berlinale, the TEchnical Uni Berlin, some propaganda poster exhibition, etc, but we were already like the living dead from much beer and party :-)

Monday was the Rosen Montag, a day for catholic carnevals in germany, and the last part of our trip, the train from Wiesbaden to DArmstadt was full of drunk and masked people, it was a nice end to a nice trip.

I really like Berlin, it was my 3rd time there, and each time it was non stop fun. The technical university there also has some quite nice research areas, i may try to get a PhD program there one day, and i could imagine myself living in Berlin one day. The city is quite open and multicultural, there is even a Baj Ganjo pub there :-) , and prices for rent and food are still lower than in Darmstadt.
But only time will tell when i will visit Berlin again
I have planned a trip to Munchen at the end of March, and i will see how they compare.