Berlin beginings

Wednesday August 4,2010

On Sunday I went to church in the Dom with my host Dad and it was quite a display. It was my first time in a catholic mass. Everything seemed so scripted and emotionless. They came in with a smoking pot thing that smelled a lot like potpourri and made me cough for like 10 minutes. I even tried the holding your breath thing which kind of just made it all worse! I absolutely hate coughing when it’s totally silent AND you’re in a huge famous church while the bishop is speaking. In the end the woman next to me seemed really grossed out and eventually gave me a mint to calm me down. My right eye was like a waterfall because I couldn’t control anything! Anyways it was an experience to say the least. That evening Claire and I started to cook our “American” dinner of tacos from a kit for our family. They didn’t have ground beef so we just chopped it up as small as we could for the tacos. All in all I’d say they liked it even if it was crazy messy. I’m glad I could show them something new. Afterwards I tried to offer a tortilla with honey but only Claire and I ate one. We gave them our Texas/Louisiana gifts and they really liked the belt buckle and “Don’t Mess With Texas” bumper sticker. James says he’s going to put it on his smart car. I think it’s pretty funny.

Monday morning we ate our last breakfast in Bonn. Sad day. We went on the bike tour with everyone which was funny because everyone had a rinky dink bike. They had gears like mountain bikes but looked all weird and some you had to pedal backwards to break. Old school stuff. The bike tour was a lot of fun! Lots of cool sights and facts. Afterwards we hit up a tasty pizzeria where each of us finished off our own entire pizza! We all got prettied up and walked forever in the rain to a bar area that was by the bike tour place. My sexy rain jacket definitely helped out the outfit!

Tuesday we went to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It was a great experience. It’s my first one I’ve been to but it was very eye opening. There was a sick kitty at the bus stop on the way back. I petted it with my jacket sleeve and turns out JW said there was definitely something wrong with it and I probably shouldn’t have. We caught the train back (on the way Kathryn was sleeping and I said queso and her eyes shot open like heaven itself had just been spoken to her. Twas quite funny!) and ate lunch at this super tasty place. I got a water which was, of course, tiny so I refilled it in a bathroom sink. There was a little girl in there that stopped washing her hands just so she could look at me like I’m crazy while I stole some tap water. We walked to the Topography of Terror. It was really neat. It’s been raining a lot here lately.