Wandering in Berlin

When I hit Berlin towards the end of my two months in Europe, it was my third visit to the city. On each visit, I've just spent a few days there (at four days, this one was the longest), and I've stayed in a different part of the city. This time I stayed with a couchsurfer, I. (originally from Mexico), near Schönhauser Allee in the northeast of the city.

I love Berlin. I've loved it since my first trip there. And despite the fact that I wasn't feeling the best (because of the lurgy that hit me in Poland), I had a fantastic time on this trip. I spent a lot of time wandering around the Schönhauser Allee area, finding Bärenland (a shop devoted to gummi bears and the like) and its fantastic honey gummi bears, the in't Veld chocolate shop (Zotter... and Valrhona ... nothing more needs to be said!), the Frida Kahlo cafe (incredible salsa) and, of course, all the wonderful, wonderful German bread.

Here's Bärenland (why? why not!):



Some of my time wandering was spent with a Russian, A., who was also staying with I. She had an old SLR camera and so we both took some random photos. During one session of taking photos my batteries ran out, but I still got some nice shots, like this one at Bornhomerstraße at sunset:



I have to leave some of the Berlin stories until I write a post on couchsurfing (which I will do soon, I just need to check some things with a couple of people that I want to write about). But it was quite a random few days. I met up with a friend I'd made in Perugia, too. We spent some time hanging out in a bar by the river. People had pulled their boats up there, too, to stop for a drink, and while we were sitting with our feet in the water, we helped a couple of guys launch their lightweight canoe. (No, this isn't the canoe!)