Täglich Wiederkehrendes Abenteuer

Day 7 started out the way any good day should: with a trip to KFC.

We had a little hankering for home, so we decided to hit the KFC we had noticed earlier in the week. Well, sad news. KFC here is kinda like a chicken oriented McDonald’s. It’s got that same fast food polish the other major chains do. You also can’t order the weird stuff that makes KFC so distinctive, like the mashed potato bowl or that creepy chicken-for-bread thing. While arguably good, it didn’t feel like home. The food is identical though… so it’s odd that it felt so off. Huh.

The first task of the day was to return to the Reichstag area to get a little chunk of wall. That first place we had been like, 5 days ago, had the best price/selection, so we had to go back. On the way I got a picture of something Ben had pointed out.

Notice anything odd? Yeah, that whole building is covered with a gigantic tarp. The whole thing is a facade. Weird, huh? They must be doing something pretty cool under there to warrant such an extravagant disguise.

After our wall chunk buying was done, we walked back through the gate. There was something major going on because at the crosswalk we had to wait on the green walking man as 8 or so police cars went zipping through in some kind of convoy. Then as we went by a hotel we saw more police officers and some security guards. Someone important was around, but we didn’t care, so we headed for the subway.

In the subway we found an ad that Mary Jo does not approve of.

Guess Mary Jo can’t work with goats. Good to know.

We worked down into the middle of the city to check out the Ritter Sport place. We saw an ad in the little tour book we had, and since Mary Jo loves Ritter Sport, we decided to check it out. Wow. That place was crazy! The second you walk in there’s a place where you can custom build your own candy bar. Then there’s a huge shop with Ritter branded everything, and every variation of candy they make. Upstairs is a small museum on chocolate and how Ritter Sport is made. Then there’s a cafe that specializes in chocolate. I almost died just from looking at the menu.

We made sure to explore every inch, buy some chocolate, then go through the custom candy bar thing. You select chocolate type and up to 4 mix-ins. They combine everything and throw it in a Ritter Sport mold. They pop it in the fridge for 30 minutes. You come back, pick it up, and you’re the proud owner of a custom candy bar. More on that later.

Next up on the list was the Stasi museum. That was kind of out of the city center a bit, so we had several subway rides to get there. It was kinda small to be honest. There also wasn’t much English to be had, so I was a little bored. They did have some neat-o spy gear though. Like a camera tie!

Or a camera log!

Yeah, camera log. I’m not joking.

After the museum we went back to Marlena’s place. She got home from work and we all went out to a little Italian place for pizza. It was nummers. After that we returned to her place for some German Settlers of Catan. It’s a board game for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure. Along with the board game, we decided to have our custom candy.

Between the candy and the game, everyone was happy!

Well, maybe happy and confused.

But mostly happy.

All we know is that the candy was delicious.

I had milk chocolate with orange chunks, rice crispies, and strawberry flakes mixed in. Mary Jo had milk chocolate with gummy bears, rice crispies, and raisins mixed in. Both were delicious, but Mary Jo’s had the added benefit of gummy bears suspended in chocolate and looking not unlike a famous Star Wars character. Everyone was sad when the candy was gone.

After we played a couple of games, it was time for bed.

The next morning we got up and bid Marlena goodbye, since we’d be gone before she returned from work. We spent the morning Internetting and writing post cards. We figured that since we were in a country with an actual postal system, we’d give it a shot. Hopefully these actually make it home. We went down to the post office and mailed them off, then bought some lunch. We got the rest of our stuff together, and headed for the train station.

I just wanted to share this postcard with you. I’m not sure why, but I really like it. I think that it’s neat to see what the city looked like with the wall in place.

The ride back was uninteresting with one small exception. We got on the train only to find a woman in our seats. She said she had the same seats booked. She looked at our ticket and said hers was the same. Well, bummer. She said that happened to her when she came to Berlin too, so we just needed to wait for a conductor. The train was full, so we both stood and waited while she sat there. Noticing a tone yet? The ticket guy came along, took one look at her ticket, and promptly declared that she had booked the seat for the next month. I really got the impression that she’s not a woman that’s used to not getting her way. “Unnecessarily confident” would be how I’d put it.

It really wasn’t that big of a deal though. We got our seats and she had to find a free seat, which is much easier than finding two free seats. We did the exact same path as how we got to Berlin, but backwards. We arrived in Linz late Thursday, got back to the room, and went straight to bed. I’ve been working on getting pictures and videos sorted out and uploaded since then, but now that it’s all done, you have the full story of our week in Berlin.

*Additional note from Mary Jo:  Later in the train ride, that woman was sitting right across from us.  She was on the phone describing (in German) what had happened and how embarrassed she felt that she had so confidently remained seated while the two of us stood around for twenty minutes waiting for the conductor to come and kick her out of our seats.  It was cute.  She knew we were English speakers and probably didn’t think I could understand her.

But honestly, we could have made the same mistake.