Berlin Days 30-31. Finale

The Final Day in Deutschland...........

I woke up and decided to take a long walk through the city and began in Charlottenburg, in the West End, with a trip to KaDeWe, which I have previously not been to. It is the Saks Fifth Avenue/Harrod's of Berlin with a Best Buy and a Whole Foods thrown in. After 30 minutes there I thought to myself, why are you in a department store on your last day?? So I left and walked through the Tiergarden to find my friends Sasha and Ellie, and then made my way to the Reichstag, and then over to the Brandenburg Gate and a final trip up the Unter Den Linden to Goethe. A 6 mile walk which felt like it was a few blocks. 

Met up with Yael for Vietnamese for lunch and a final goodbye - which was sad and funny, and then made my way back home to pack and an hour of rest. 

The evening was spent in Friedrichshain with Will the Aussie, Jamilya the Uzbeki, Djojo the Turk, and James the LA guy. 

It is funny. I went to Berlin with the intentions of spending all of my time in the old Jewish neighborhood - the Sheunenviertel - and ended up spending most of my time in Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg, and Friedrichshain. Life is what happens when you're making plans, so they say. Anyway, we had a great night of Indian food and beers and reminiscing, which culminated in a final farewell at Alexanderplatz. 

I am now at home and have to wake up in 4 hours to make my flight back to Atlanta. 

A lot to say about this trip, all of it good. I was sharing an Einstein quote the other day with a friend, that went something like this: The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious....it is [religious]. Going from that, Berlin has been a deeply religious experience - there is no where more mysterious and intellectually exciting [to me] that I could have gone in the world. Wide open, bright eyes at almost every turn. I went from being 38 to 8 for a month and it was exhilarating, scary, and mostly fantastic.  

I am hopeful that I can put everything I have learned here into the book. And, as I have said, if that doesn't pan out I will at least be able to yell at you in German - which is priceless. 

Love to you all, my friends. 

Signing off from Prenzlauer Berg........

-Dan