June 3 - Body Pains

My writsts hurt. That's right, I'm complaining. I don't care what anyone says, even if I am in another country and might never have another opportunity like this again, I get the right to complain sometimes. Left and right wrists hurt. Somehow I hurt the left one of the way to Germany, I guess through the many hours of carrying an overly large carry-on and personal item. Then last night my right wrist did that thing where after I rotate it to left my purse onto my shoulder something snaps in my hand, radiating pain down to my wrist until it decides to stop. The radiating pain has stopped in my right hand but my wrist still hurts. And trying to lift, push, or pull things with my left hands is not fun and I'm going to try very hard to not have to do it much (of course this promise only lasts until we leave for Milan and the hard core 'backpacking' begins).

In addition to the somewhat shooting pain in both wrists, I managed to have another really great day. It didn't start out so great, because for some reason, even though I went to bed around 1am, I woke up at about 7:30am and couldn't go back to sleep. I mean, there I was laying on my sleeping bag (and Laura's foam mat, so it wasn't that uncomfortable) and I couldn't sleep. It was horrible. I tried moving after about half an hour but my body was so tired, I couldn't stand the thought of really being awake. I then moved to the chairs in the living room, hoping that maybe it was the lying on the ground that was making it impossible to sleep. But nope. I listened to my iPod and meditated in vain - sleep was permanently elluding me. Finally I took out my Mom's laptop and then sat on the chair and read an ebook. A good one, but damn, all I wanted to do was sleep and be unconscious.

Later though, I took a shower and prepared for another long day in Berlin. We started out and went to the Postdammer mall to have lunch (because even though I was awake at 7:30am we didn't leave until 12:30pm). And at the mall, after I finished a satisfying snitzel with egg and potatoes, I saw Jenny Guo! Finishing up a purchase for her lunch too! I'm kind of ashamed to say that I screamed her name, ran and hugged her and kind of jumped up and down. Shameful. I know. You don't need to tell me.

After chattering with her at the table for a little while, it was decided that since she was on her own, Jenny would join the four of us on our excursion to museum island. So even though we got a little lost, the company made the work well worth it. Before the Museum though we went by Brandenburg Tor and the Parliment buidling to show Laura some of what she missed. It was so cool! Like two days later the square/park that surrounded Brandenburg Tor was filled with more people and even more dogs! There was a group of these really beautiful huskies and so many people were out walking their little dogs even though the day was clouded. And there, underneath Brandenburg, I met up with Jessica Lin! And not surprisingly, another screaming, hugging, and jumping episode commenced.
Long story short, eventually we did finally get to the museum. I'm not always a museum person but since it took us a little longer to get there we only had about an hour and a half to look around which was just the right amount of time. Pergamonmuseum was really nice though. It was an museum island, an actual small island that has four museums that people can go visit. It had really nice examples of Islamic art, and even some Roman statues. I'm actually really glad that Jenny came with us, because once we got inside we split up but Jenny and I stayed together and she (due to an unnatural obsession with the History Channel) was able to give me all this cool information about Babylon, Cuniform and the origin of 'eye for an eye'. After we left the museum we decided it was time to go the 'redlight district' and have some dinner and ice cream. We got cheated into paying more than we really wanted to for dinner (no damn signs denoting when the specials end) and then took a stroll off to get some ice cream and head home. It was on our way to the train station that we saw actual, real live prostitutes. There were three of them and they were all wearing corsets with tights and high heeled white boots. But one of them was really sickening. She sincerely looked like someone had taken out two ribs and a couple organs to get her waist that small. We spend a few minutes pretending to take pictures of each other trying to get one of the woman, but she kept turning and we couldn't get a good one without being really obvious. Eating ice cream on the walk back was just the perfect end to a day filled with new experiences.

Go figure.