I arrived in Berlin this morning, and set about the task of finding my hostel, Circus. Rick was not particularly helpful, but luckily I had copied down directions from the hostel's website and was able to follow them without too much trouble. At least Rick's maps didn't actively confuse me, like they did in Dresden.
After checking in, I explored a little bit this afternoon, walking all the way down Unter den Linden, the main drag through old East Berlin. I passed by it all pretty quickly and saw the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. Tomorrow I think I'll do one of the organized walking tours, so I thought that today I would just roam around at will.
First impressions of Berlin are pretty positive. It's immediately obvious that this city dwarfs all of the others that I've visited this trip, both in size and the humming vibe of activity. There are people everywhere, and it feels very international. Most excitingly, this is reflected in the food. I had a delicious meal at a Vietnamese place tonight. Sitting outside eating soup and yellow curry chicken with coconut milk was a nice change from sausages and sauerkraut and schnitzels. And, perhaps most importantly, this tasty food went quite well with dunkles beer too.
A random aside: this morning, in Dresden, I decided that I could not wait another day before doing laundry. So I headed to a laundromat and puzzled through the German instructions. It was drizzling outside and there were about 400 lost socks hanging from the ceiling. I was listening to my ipod and watching my clothes bounce around in circles in the dryer. As much as I normally hate doing laundry, I don't think I would've wanted to spend the morning any other way.
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