Ich bin ein berliner

Well no, but I ate a berliner. I'm currently on a night train from Berlin to Paris. For the first time I'm doing a night train not in the seats but on the couchette thing. There are six in a compartment which means that there is another bed about thirty centimetres from my nose. Being in the middle bunk makes it interesting getting up and down. But once here it's not too uncomfortable and hopefully I will sleep better than some other night trains I've had. But even if I don't I'm not going to let that stop me because tomorrow I will be in Paris and I'm not going to waste time napping. Once we get in and dump luggage at the hostel we're going to put on our super tourist hats (which will likely be the same hat I wear every other day) and keep prodding each other awake and possibly resorting to caffeine so that we can see as much of the city as we can. Which means I'm not expecting a lot of down time tomorrow to write this in because I expect that if I sit for long I won't stand up again. So I should write this now. But I'm kind of sleepy so might not get far. Which means you probably won't get this tomorrow. Too bad. I'll be in Paris.
Since I last wrote we have been to Dresden and Berlin. Dresden was incredible. If you didn't know that only 60 years ago it was completely destroyed and most of it's population killed you probably wouldn't guess. Parts of the resorted buildings are still blackened from the fire and you can tell which parts are new because the clean blocks stand out beside the black ones but it is a vibrant city full of history. They didn't let a little thing like total destruction get in the way of that. Unfortunately it rained pretty much the whole time we were there and on the first day when we were going to the old town to be tourists the wind was incredible. Felt like we were about to be blown off the bridge at one point. But on the plus side there weren't so many people around.
I also ate one of the best burgers I have ever had I'm my entire life. Might be worth a trip to Germany just for that.
Our next stop was Berlin. And it rain the whole time we were there too. By that point it had been raining on us for over a week and I was really sick of it.  Weather patterns of any sort don't often last a whole week in Christchurch. So we ended up spending much of the first day hunkering inside reading books. But we did make the effort to go for a walk. Saw the Brandenburg gate, the dom, the tv tower thing, the holocaust memorial and book burning square. As well as a bunch of other things along the path. It's a nice city and there's history everywhere you turn, much of it not very nice but they've managed to hold on to the not so nice past and create a nice city anyway.
Yesterday we went to 3 museums. The neues museum with it's egyptian stuff, the pergamon museum with Greek and Roman and Assyrian, and the old national gallery with all sorts of paintings and sculpture.
Right so yesterday's "today" is now today's "yesterday" so don't be confused when I follow the previous paragraph with:
Then yesterday sadly required shopping. The zipper on my pants has broken twice and while I have managed to fix it both times it's clearly not going to last all that long. So I have to find new pants before they break for good. And I really hate shopping for pants. But I did it anyway. I didn't actually buy anything though so i will have to shop again in the near future.
Since it was our last day in Germany we got pretzels and also bought bratwurst from a guy with a portable barbecue. And by that I mean he had a barbecue strapped to himself so he could walk around and sell sausages. There was an umbrella sticking out of the part on his back with the tank in it too. There were actually a whole bunch of them and I felt like I couldn't not get one.
And then the night train. Which wasn't too bad. Obviously not awesome because it was on a train but even with the lack of space it is better to be lying down.
When we got to Paris we tracked down the hostel then went to a cafe for breakfast where we sat doing got chocolates and munching croissants as we looked out at the basilique de sacre couer. Sound like a good start to the day? Well it continued in the same sort of way. First we climbed to sacre couer where we got good views of the city and happened to stumble into the church in time for a mass. With a full choir of nuns. It was interesting because of course I understood none of the words but felt like I almost knew what to say because the rhythm and patterns to the mass are the same in english. Then we walked back down the hill, stopped by the information centre for the museum pass, walked from there past the louvre, along the champs elysee to the arch de triomphe. We climbed up to the viewing platform and got a few slightly foggy photos across the city and of the eiffel tower (at which point my camera died. Lucky for you because it means I actually yolk a few with my phone so you might ever see some). Then we walked to the eiffel tower where we decided we'd had enough stairs for one day and didn't go up. Then over to the luxembourg gardens and the pantheon and finally across to notre dame. At which point we decided we had managed to fit enough into a day that started out with the tired that comes from a night train. So we headed back to the hostel.
Now it's about 9.30 and I am going to sleep. I will try to remember to post this in the morning.