Welcome to August....

I'd almost forgotten how big a city can be. And Berlin is no small city. At least five times as large as Paris, Berlin is home to millions of Germans and is the 3rd largest Turkish city in the world, behind Ankara and Istanbul.



Yesterday I visited the Kufürstendamm, the main drag from the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche (Memorial Church) to the Wittemburgerplatz. There were herds of people, it was unbelievable. On the latter square is the Berlin equivalent of Harrods in Knightbridge: KaDeWe, Kaufhaus des Westens (Department Store of the West). It's huge, six stories. Not quite as large as Harrods or Macy's, it is an actual destination for many tourists. The sixth floor consists entirely of a gourmet food store, where you may not only purchase goods imported from all over the world, but there are about ten to fifteen restaurants, where one partakes at the bar of, variously, French, Sushi, German, Swiss, Mediterranian, Antipasta, or whatnot, cooked before your very eyes. There were wine bars and tea bars and coffee bars, two bakeries, olive bars, a chocolaterie, a separate sweets department, a huge liquor section... needless to say, I wandered around, munching my roll (yes, sadly, only a roll--but it was very good) and olives, getting lost.



The street is lined with shops and cafes, sometimes of the exclusive sort, sometimes not. There must have been at least four H&Ms, one about every half block, or so it seemed to me. I also found several bookstores, one of which was going out of business, and purchased some reading material. Somehow I had made it over here with just one book. Just the one, aside from a travel guide to Freiburg and Berlin.

Yesterday evening I spent watching a slightly subpar romance movie while cutting footprints out of shelfliner. If that makes no sense to you, the decorations for the party have a 'footprints' theme, as Wolfgang is a policeman. I'm waiting to see what that turns into....