Street Markets and Gardens

On Saturday I shoved myself out of bed around 11am. Sleeping in felt good cause during the week I get up at 5:45 every morning. I first wandered over to a little tiny pizza place for lunch. I LOVE this place; its super good and super cheap. I bought two pieces; one with tuna and peppers and the other with fresh greens. Yum.....

Then I visited a few different Saturday markets. All over Berlin little markets pop up on the weekends. I like to look through them at all the fruits, veggies, arts and crafts, and food.

After that I decided to head to the Gärten der Welt. It's basically a huge park full of differently themed gardens. It has the biggest Chinese Gardens in Europe. (For the Richmonders out there, it's a lot like Maymont without the animals) It was absolutely beautiful! The whole garden smells like flowers. (I paid for this the next day. All the pollen had me sneezing every five minutes.) I first visited the labyrinth and hedge maze. The maze was a lot of fun, I got lost a few times. I then headed to the Chinese gardens. Unfortunately, most of it was roped off, because there was a wedding going on. (I actually saw the bride as I was leaving the gardens, for some reason they were taking wedding pictures next to the bus stop I was waiting at.) I also visited the Korean Gardens, Japanese Gardens, Italian Gardens, Balinese Gardens, and the Oriental Gardens. I trekked all over and took some gorgeous pictures.

I got back to the apartment and my roommate Sören and his girlfriend Elisabeth had cooked dinner. Elisabeth had made a traditional German dinner of red cabbage and potato dumplings. It was absolutely delicious! After dinner we sat around, drank wine, and they introduced me to popular German music.

Later that night we met up with Elisabeth's friend Nicole and Sören's friend Nils and went out. We went to two different bars before me and the two girls decided to go to a dancing club. We walked down this little side street and up to this big iron gated courtyard. It didn't look like a club at all. The bouncer let us in and we headed up some stairs into this room with a huge domed ceiling. It seriously looked like some kind of cathedral. The music was good but the alcohol was expensive! We danced for an hour or two and then headed to a different bar to meet back up with the boys. We stayed that this bar for a while and before I knew it, it was four in the morning!! That bar was closing so we went to a different bar that apparently was open until 8 in the morning. I was ready to head to bed, but no one else was so I ended up dozing on a couch, in a bar, at 6 in the morning. We didn't start to head home until 6:30am, we grabbed a döner for breakfast and headed home. By this time I was a walking zombie and Elisabeth had practically passed out. We got back to the apartment at 7am and I practically fell into my bed.