Today we hanged out in the Western boroughs of Charlottenburg & Schönenberg. Charlottenburg, named after Queen consort Sophia Charlotte (1668-1705) is best known for Charlottenburg Palace, the largest surviving royal palace in Berlin. Besides the castle there's the famous posh shopping avenue, Ku'damm, where you can find all the top dollar stores. Schönenberg on the other hand is mostly a residential district, having a few alternative music & fashion shops here & there. One of them was this second-hand-heaven called Garage (Schaarstrasse). Their vast collection of all sorts of garments from tees to blazers & scarves to loungers, makes this store the wet dream of bargain hunters. That's not all. You pay the garments by the kilo, just like bananas or tomatoes in a grocery store. 12,99/kilo for most of the garments, with the exception of tees at 6,99. So after scaling my tee at the cash register, the price we looked at was 1,31€. Dirt cheap.
After the tour in the more tourist-packed boroughs, we headed our sights to Tiergarten. We bought a football for a red note at Nike Town in Ku'damm & after that we were set to go. Just made a quick stop for a lager at Hooters Bar just across the road of Tiergarten train station. I was a bit befuddled that there were so many parents with their kids dining in the restaurant. Then again that's how a dad ensures his sons to grow up heterosexual. Anyway we weren't feeling the vibe of Hooters: it was pretty lowly of the half-naked waitresses to write over our bill "tips not included". So we started playing football in this gigantic park of Tiergarten (Animal Park) with pretty idyllic small lakes & thick oak trees. The lakes soon turned out to be our achilles heel. Our starting striker of Töölön Taisto, Gervinho, decided to cross the ball blindfolded. This is what happened:
After a while we spotted these lovers rowing & asked for help, probably ruined the poor guys' date.
Germans aren't that good a rowers, the lad almost sunk the ship trying to get the ball.
Always with a happy face when you've got a football on your hands.
Besides the incident, the games were awesome. I can't imagine a better way of spending a late afternoon playing bare-foot-joga-bonito football with a bunch of friends. Strongly recommended.
All sweaty & exhausted we started our trip back home from West Berlin to the East side. During the train trip from Tiergarten to Ostkreuz we realized concretely the two sides of Berlin. Looking out of the train to the city is the best way to perceive the thin invisible border between East & West. Somewhere between Alexanderplatz to Jannowitzbrucke the sleek, antique buildings start to turn into clone-like concrete apartments along with factories puffing grey smoke. It's a matter of seconds, I'm telling you.
To finnish the evening, ate a trademark Berlin imbiss (snack), currywurst. For 2,70€ this highly available serving throughout the city is the true king of kiosk-culinary. It satisfies all our needs: cheap, tasty & tradional, in that order. So it goes.
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