Pfingsten

So today was Pfingsten, which is Pentecost, I believe, and that means a holiday in Germany. Yukako got back from Barcelona last night and we met up for lunch today. We had sushi (yay salmon!) at a great Japanese restaurant on my street called Sasaya that the person I'm subletting from had recommended to the previous tenant. Then we walked around Prenzlauer Berg for a few, from S-Bhf Prenzlauer Allee to Schönhauser Allee, from the Mauerpark to Kastanien Allee, all the way to Hackescher Markt where, after working up a hunger from all of that walking, we stopped at the Haagen Daaz shop and had some ice cream.

I've been doing a lot of reading for my MA exam reading list, mainly because my apartment doesn't have TV or internet, so there have been no distractions to keep me from doing my work. I hope that the Goethe Institut had a library I can borrow books from, because the libraries in Berlin charge 5 euros for a library card, and the Staatsbibliothek charges 25! For that money I could buy quite a few books. There is also a cheap bookstore on Alexanderplatz I might look into--they have books for pretty cheap I think (but they aren't open today because of the holiday).

I took a trip to Tiergarten yesterday, but within 15 minutes of arriving there it started thundering. I walked to the train station and a few minutes after getting on the train it was pouring. By the time I got back to U-Bhf Eberswalderstrasse, though, it had stopped. So then I decided to go out for a walk a little bit later, but ended up falling asleep. When I woke up half an hour later and it was thundering and pouring again! So I think my best bet in Berlin is to never be without my umbrella. And I intend on doing a lot of exploring while I am here. I coughed up the 72 euros for a monthly pass to use the bus, train, subway, and tram system, so I want to put it to good use. I was just thinking how cool it would be to read an entire book while riding on the Ringbahn (a fast train that rings around the city center).