Day 15: Classic, 'alt' (old) school day in Berlin

Another day where the weather cleared up enough by late morning to give me a chance to see the sites of this city. Hit the older area of town around Mitte to see the classic architecture this place is known for and a walk through Tiergarten (lovely big green space in the centre of the city), before getting into some European history at the Pergamon Museum and some big pretzels that made me thirsty enough the crack open a Kostritzer Schwarzbier to celebrate Jaimi writing a new song (phew).

Then, to juxtapose the music we went to the night before, we saw a friend of Jaimi's playing piano in a classical trio at Charlottenburg. Luke and his accompaniment played great and with the Yellow Tail Merlot ('carn aussie) found myself getting relaxed and sleepy after the long day walking around.

Still, the classic-ness continued at a cafe across the road where a meal of beer and nachos was had and again was able to hang out with more aussie people living here in Berlin. There is definitely a 'type' of aussie that comes over here to Berlin, and entails them being just cool to hang out with, so was great to have another night with that sort of experience. In fact, we found one person (Bethany) who grew up in Charlestown (Newcastle) and her family have a farm in Clarencetown (not far away from my own folks in Gresford). Weird to meet someone like that in Berlin. Ok, in terms of beer, I had a Diebels Altbeer, which while had a pilsner structure, had been aged I think, so the hops had mellowed and there was a better roundness in the flavour overall. not much alcohol, but was good to slowly sip away at this while chatting to the people around me.

So by the time we finished up, most of the trains had stopped running, but we did manage to get one to the centre of town and then catch two buses to get us close to Jaimi's (Thanks Bethany!), before the last classic event of the night, where he checked in at Macca's for a dodgy burger (ahhh, Jaimi and his midnight munchies). So another night were we get to bed in the wee small hours of the morn, but without drinking as much as you would normally being out that late.

So to day 16, and hoping to find something resembling a beer store that I can get a good selection of the beers I want to try in Germany, while exploring more of this city.

Beefy