pfwau.

My day did not become more efficient after my Giant Schnitzel. Check this: so the reason I was buying a memory card in the first place was because I thought I lost my other one. Why did I think I lost it? Well, it wasn't in my camera, because the camera was telling me "No Memory Card" when I turned it on. So I looked EVERYWHERE for it, etc, not finding it. This is called foreshadowing.

Today I finally found a place to buy a memory card, and I bought one, and opened my camera to put it in and start photographizing, and...guess what I found??? My old memory card! This did not bode well. So I stuck the new card in the camera, and...I bet you can guess what the camera said. That's right, it said "Too Many Trips to The Beach, You Dumb Fucker. I've Got Sand Or Other Debris in My Card Slot." Or something like that, I was too mad to remember.

Like any good thriller, this one has a false happy ending. After blowing really hard into my card slot for about 5 minutes, my camera finally recognized my card. Yay! I can take pictures!

So I head down to Checkpoint Charlie, to take a picture for Mara, because she and I both have a soft spot for this 80s movie called Gotcha! in which Checkpoint Charlie plays a pivotal role. And I take out my now-functioning camera to take a picture and...my battery runs out. I did manage to snap one barely-aimed photo:

It is 4 o'clock by this point, and I have accomplished almost nothing besides raising my blood pressure and buying a memory card that I didn't really need. I won't even describe the hilarity that ensued when I then went to an internet cafe to print my train ticket (which I eventually succeeded at doing). Time for a beer, no?

This is Prater Biergarten in Prenzlauer Berg, it's huge and extremely pleasant. My beer is also huge and extremely pleasant. There's no table service, just a beer window and a food window, which I am going nowhere near, because I know all they have is sausage and pretzels, which I'm sure would be great, but...I'm trying to come home at roughly the same size I was when I left.

People drink an assload of beer in Berlin. You can buy it anywhere, at any time of day, and drink it anywhere. And people do. On the subway, on the street, maybe even in their cars, I don't know. One wonders how this works, this everyone drinking all the time everywhere.

Randomly: Berlin is much much bigger and much prettier than I realized. The last time we were here, we stayed in Prenzlauer Berg exclusively. And though it definitely has a certain appeal, I'm not sure "pretty" is one of the first words you'd use to describe it.

Mitte, on the other hand, as long as you stay away from Friederichstrasse and the gross tourist/commerical stuff, is very pretty in a big-city way. But European, like Bologna or parts of Milano. And all of it feels very urban and exciting, in different ways than our little Amsterdam does, and that is a good feeling for me.

I'm not saying I'm on the moving to Berlin train with everyone else, but I certainly understand the appeal. I'm going to keep it as my cheap and close-by NYC...an exciting place to visit. I've got a couple of gigs scheduled here in February, so it's nice to know I'm coming back soon.