Omar was very into the Berlin clubbing scene when he lived there, so he happened to know a friend who was DJing at 7am today.
Allan, Joe, and Elizabeth got up early to partake, while Shashank (now fully in the middle of his sickness), Ryan (starting to get sick), and Benton (not yet sick) all slept in. From what Benton heard, the club was an experience (cereal).
Once Benton was up, he went with Allan to do laundry and eat breakfast. This was a boring, but necessary experience, and we regretted not looking ahead to make sure that our Berlin lodging had laundry, since we could have done laundry in Prague.
After laundry, Allan, Benton, and Shashank went to Mauerpark for the weekend flea market, and Benton bought a canvas jacket. We then saw a monument for where the Berlin wall used to be. After that was döner for lunch at Brunnen Dönerhaus (Shashank had his first ever taste of Fanta here).
In the meantime, Omar slept (the clubbing had taken a bit of a toll), while Ryan, Elizabeth, and Joe went to see Brandenburg Gate, stopping to make an appointment to go up the dome of the Reichstag Building the following day.
Elizabeth then split up and went back to the Airbnb to meet up with Clayton and Kira (a couple she knew from San Francisco through Meta). Omar also met up with a friend, while the others (Shashank, Joe, Benton, Allan, and Ryan) met up to go to DDR Museum.
The 5 boys then went to Mandarin Coffee Roastery for coffee (Joe got a huge piece of pistachio cheesecake to go along with the rest of our drinks), and we then went to AMANO Bar. We ended up walking into AMANO Rooftop Conference first and were very confused as to where we had entered. In general, there was a lot of banter during this trip to the bar (a bit more than Allan would have liked), but overall it was fun. Ryan tried his first Aperol spritz, and we were able to catch the end of an El Classico ⚽ match. Allan was sharing more details about the techno club, including how it was smoky and the only ventilation got boarded up by some people at the club.*
*Allan managed to accidentally phrase this story in a way that made it sound like a very non-PC joke about 20th century German history, to the point that the rest of us were quite entertained when he didn’t hear himself speaking.
Omar eventually joined at Amano, though not before making the exact same mistake and going to the rooftop conference lounge.
Finally, the entire group (9 of us at this point!), managed to meet up for dinner at Wen Cheng 3; by this point we had dubbed the area around Boxhagener Platz the “East Village” (NYC neighborhood) of Berlin. At dinner, most of the dishes came with a free fried egg, and to our surprise, this was a deep-fried soft boiled egg. Elizabeth did not like that the waiter didn’t want her to decline the egg (even though the others at the table said they wanted an extra, and he said it came on the side). 🤷
From dinner, we all walked to East Side Gallery, where we relaxed for a bit before deciding to go to a bar. The 9 of us were struggling a bit to make a decision about where to go, and Benton tried to split up the group (he didn’t want to be out that late drinking, and in general finds groups more entertaining to hang out with when they are a bit smaller). He tried to split the group, but ultimately just split himself off from the group, so he went back to the Airbnb to sleep a bit earlier.*
*This move apparently concerned those in the group who weren’t as close with Benton, as some thought maybe he was annoyed/upset with the group. Fortunately, enough people know him in the group to clear this up; he just didn’t want to roam around searching for a bar in Berlin any longer, and he was already on the fence about going initially.
The others wondered around before choosing to sit outside and have drinks at Simon‘s Bar before calling it a night and heading back to chill at the Airbnb a bit before going to sleep.
