Trip to Berlin

Berlin 041, originally uploaded by deniseakob.

The weekend of June 9 I went to Berlin and stayed with Marco and Janine(picture above)--Marco is a PhD student in Kirsten's lab and his girlfriend Janine is a PhD student in Berlin. They were fantastic hosts and made my visit a wonderful experience!

On Saturday, we spent the day kayaking in an area called Spreewald which is ~1 hour from Berlin. The kayak trip was organized by friends of Marco and Janine and it ended up being a large group--9 boats! We had a great time paddling around the area and stopped for a nice picnic lunch at a grassy spot. The Spreewald is a wetlands area with some small towns and man-made canals weaving through it. The area is now mostly nature preserve and a popular tourist spot for Germans. It was interesting to see the area because in some ways it is similar to a Florida swamp but the plants are a bit different and there are no alligators! It was funny because early in the trip I had to remind myself that the log in the water was not an alligator! The Spreewald is also a famous place for pickles and I tasted an authentic Spreewald pickle at a canal-side stand. You can just paddle the boat up to a stand, coffee shop, cafe or pub!! They make a variety of flavored pickles--some good, some not so good! I would love to share photos of the trip but, unfortunately all of the photos were lost from my camera. I am hoping to get photos from the other kayakers or find a way to retrieve the pics.

On Sunday we went sightseeing in the central part of east Berlin--we walked a total of 11 km in 6 hours! Luckily we were able to make the best of a single day in Berlin and saw lots of the main sights. I'll post more info soon but for now there are more pics at my Flickr site.