Such hardships we have to face here....

One day on the weekend we usually get baked goods from the bakery for breakfast because it is a) super cheap and b) super tasty. We always get the same thing - a pretzel or pretzel stick and a sesame ring. The sesame rings are delicious and huge! Just look at Raymond eating his!I usually break it up into pieces so I never quite realized how big they were (though they are light and airy). Delicious!


I have been on the hunt to try and find a local organic market for a while now. They have a ton of markets here, but the produce is from all over and most is not organic. I scoured the internets and found one not too far away that we could check out so we did. It was listed as amazing with all local organic things and it sounded perfect! I was hoping there would be a lot of produce vendors as it had clothing and such also listed. Well we go to check it out and...as Raymond said I think you were tricked. I was soooo disappointed. I mean there were like 2 organic vendors and that was it. There were a ton of people selling Dole bananas and such which come on - they do not grow here and they are not organic. So I am admitting defeat and I will just buy things from the grocery store. We did find a smaller market on the way home with the same 2 organic farmers that is closer to our place so I might start going there and getting a few things and the rest from the store. It is so disappointing....I wish we had the U District Farmers Market here....oh well.

Also two weeks ago we went to our first roller derby here!! I was pretty excited! Berlin was alright - not like Oly caliber or anything, but they were not terrible.  As we were walking in they were talking to people since they need more refs and nso's so I think I might do that....it would be less of a time commitment and I would still be involved with the roller derby which could be fun. We shall see. They played Dublin and I really thought Berlin would win, but somehow Dublin came out on top. Really they were pretty evenly matched in the second half and both teams just kept making stupid mistakes. Oh and they had baked goods for sale and lots of vegan options! Win.


The roller derby was held down by Treptower park and we walked back along the water and right by this huge sculpture thin in the river - there are 3 of these giant people and they look like they are fighting, though I just looked them up (Molecule Men - they have holes in them supposedly to represent the molecules we are all made up of....) and they are just leaning on each other. It is odd and they are huge.

The day after roller derby we decided to go to a movie and watched Looper. I really enjoyed it, way more than I thought I would. They did not give away the entire plot in the previews which was nice. But really I was just going to the movies to try the sweet popcorn! And the sweet popcorn was delicious, almost like kettle corn Raymond said, but I think I prefer salty. Or I could have eaten way more salty than sweet.


It had been pretty cold here and we had been having to bundle up, but this past weekend was gorgeous! It got into the low 70's on Sat and was sunny so we had to go exploring. We decided to ride down by Raymond's work where there is a long Berlin wall exhibit thing - lots of parts of the wall are up, or the rebar where it stood and stories about people trying to escape and such and we had not gone to check it out yet. On the way we rode by this park that had a small hill and at the top some overlooks so I wanted to check that out! Get a nice view of Berlin since it is so flat.

Of course there was a sculpture at the top with lots of graffiti on the base which you cannot really see. And some views of the city from the viewing platforms:




 
Lots and lots of trees. And the graffiti on the overlook


And off to the side there was the only informational thing showing that the different buildings are you can see from this point. However you can only see trees....so it is not that helpful and made me laugh.


Fall in Berlin. There are trees everywhere and they are all deciduous so the leaves are all changing and falling. It was really gorgeous riding our bikes around and it was warm. but still fall colors everywhere.

Our tour started off in the Nordbahnhof which was a Ghost station when the wall was up. It was in East Berlin, though trains would come through the station connecting different parts of West Berlin so it was walled up and guards stationed there and there were no stops. It was really interesting.

Then outside the station you have a long park that is along where the wall was. You can see the bricks in the road showing where it was (you can see this in a lot of places where there are no other signs that it was there) then lots of rebar on the grassy sections lining the sidewalks and then on the grass were lots of displays and info and such.


In this section there used to be a church and its wall was the first of the wall in this area. In the above photo the house in the background middle that is bright red is actually not red - the red is all ivy that is that gorgeous color.

Then there is this memorial for people who died here trying to escape and whatnot. It was pretty cool as the photos are on glass so you can see through them and there are shelves you could leave stuff on if you wanted (like flowers and such).

Then there is a section that they left the way it was. You can see the watchtower on the right and Raymond is standing by the second wall.


You can spy through the cracks at the no mans land area between the two walls.


The park goes on for quite a while.


Some pieces from the church that used to be in this spot. It was a lovely day and nice to get out exploring. Then we just had a lazy Sunday and watched a bunch of bad movies on Netflix. We have been trying to find some good scary movies for Halloween but have been really disappointed in most of them. We watched Them a few weeks ago which was pretty boring and took forever for anything to happen. It did disturb me a bit when it ended as it was not what I was expecting it to be and was based on a true story so it was kind of messed up. We also tried Session 9 which was on a list of best scary movies on Netflix or something....and it was only scary how boring it was. Nothing really happened except a bunch of people sitting around talking about nothing that mattered to anything for an hour and a half. Then shock surprise end...that I was just like okay and didn't care about. Raymond however did put on The Thing from the 80's and that was way better! The effects in it were really cool and I thought they had a really original monster thing that was pretty amazing. Maybe we should go back and watch more 80's movies....the new ones have been boring. If anyone has any suggestions or some good scary movies let me know as I would love to watch them!

Oh I almost forgot the hardships Raymond just brought to my attention last night! So we had all of his vacation planned out to use up by the end of the year like he has to (you can request to carry over a couple days into the next year but you have to use the by March or something). So a week in Paris, 4 days in Salzburg, and between Christmas and New year somewhere to use up the last of it. Well....he gets off from the Dec 22nd- Jan 3rd for a company holiday! So now we have to use up those last days somehow! It is such a hardship...I just don't know how we will do it. Really I think now we are going to leave on a Sat and go down to Munich for a few days then on to Salzburg so take a whole week off to use up one of them. Then I just don't know how to use up the rest so I think we will try and carry them over and go somewhere in like Feb or something when it is really cold and not as nice here (or so we are told). A long weekend somewhere warmer would be nice then I imagine so it shall work out nicely. Then we are not using up any vacation time for next year and will still have it for people's visits. Plus this time off for Christmas and New Years is amazing! That means we could go home for Christmas next year for a visit which is really nice. Man such hardships we are facing here ; )