121: LE MARAIS

Le Marais is where I would want to live if I were to be a Parisian. This is also where we ran into some Canadian guys who we saw for the THIRD time in three days. Day 1 = Eiffel Tower, Day 2 = Notre Dame, Day 3 = Le Marais. How coincidental is that, in this huge city?!

120: RAIN DOWN ON ME...FROM A GREAT HEIGHT...

We watched the rain coming down over the other side of Paris, while standing at the top of the Notre Dame.

119: MOONRISE

We were walking from Notre Dame (in front of which I ate one of the best gyros pitas I have ever had) towards the metro when we noticed the giant yellow moon rising above the Seine River. It doesn't look that big in my picture, but I have never seen it so yellow and gigantic in person!

118: ALIAS 6.5

This was right beside the door of a shop and I have no idea what it means. Is Alias the address? What do all those numbers above Alias stand for? And why did someone write $PERMY beside it?

117: FRIEDRICHSCHAIN

Around the Friedrichschain neighborhood.

116: Ich Möchte Eine Curryworst

Curryworst: sausage in tomato sauce sprinkled with curry powder.

Curry 36 is the best place in Berlin (according to my guidebook) to get curryworst. And it was good. And then I felt nauseous, and that made me sad.

114: SPREE RIVER SUNRISE

5:30am sunrise over Berlin.

Clubbing isn't exactly my scene, but Berlin is famous for its techno parties, so we went to one called Watergate which was just right across the river Spree (we are staying one block from the river). We had read online that it is an exclusive club that is hard to get in, and that they turn tourists away and that the bouncers quiz you on the DJs playing that night. We were planning on looking up information about the DJs, but when the bouncer asked us who was playing, we realized that was what we had forgotten. What got us in was when Cat, in her German accent, said,"Techno/Haus" when he asked us what music we listen to. The crazy thing about Berlin is that they party all night and into the next afternoon. People were still coming in at 4 am. By the time we left, it was light out, and we stopped in the middle of the medieval bridge to watch the sunrise.

113: BERLIN WALL

Our hotel is in the Friedrichshain neighborhood in Berlin and is just a few minutes walk to the East Side Gallery, which is the longest, best preserved section of the former Berlin wall. In 1990, it was covered with murals by painters using brushes and spray cans, becoming an open air gallery.

The Berlin wall consisted of two walls, the inner and the outer wall. Whenever someone from East Berlin managed to climb over the interior wall, they would fall into the "death zone", which is the strip between the inner and outer wall. This area was  patrolled regularly by the soldiers from East Berlin, and they would shoot and kill people who were stuck in this death zone. People who successfully crossed the wall did it by digging tunnels, riding hot air balloons, and escaping through the sewers.

112: TRAIN STATION

The Frankfurt airport opened today, so Rae and I were very lucky that we managed to get the first flight from Air Canada out to Frankfurt. We had a bit of trouble with getting from the airport to the train station by metro, since the English instructions on the machine just said to insert the money and then choose what kind of ticket you want. We inserted our money, and then realized that there were ten different options on the types of ticket, and all of the options were in German. We had to get a nice German man (who missed his train because he was waiting in line before us and we were taking so long) help us. Now I know that "einzelfahrt" means one way!

We managed to get to the train station in time to meet Cat, and then we were off for another 5 hours on a train to Berlin!

111: OLIVE ET GOURMANDO

Olive et Gormando is a popular cafe near the condo in Old Montreal where we were staying. It was our third attempt to eat here, and this time we were finally successful. According to Steph and E-talk daily, Jake Gyllenhaal was seen here last week. Today, we sat at a table beside Frida Pinto.