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Erica here. Now I feel bad about the water incident at dinner. Chris is really holding onto that experience. I suspected that the water was NOT going to be free, but I didn't say anything. Apparently, Chris thought it would be free. Oops. I, on the other hand, have been taking advantage of the fact that just about every restaurant serves Sweppe's bitter lemon. I have looked for it everywhere in the States and the only place I know that serves it is D'Pizza Joint on SPI. It's been great!

The Berlin Zoo is HANDS DOWN the best zoo I have ever been to. Something that seems different is that a lot of the enclosure spaces are...almost accessible but don't really pose a threat to the public from the animals. In a few places, you only had to barely reach out to touch the animals. (The enclosures pose more of a threat to the animals from the public.) We got really, really close to a camel and probably could have gotten really, really close to a lot of other things. But something else that both Chris and I have noticed is that people here seem to be much more conscious of what is acceptable and mature behavior. For example, every time I visit a zoo in the states, there's an issue with people banging on the glass and throwing food and other items at the animals. In six hours at the zoo today and all day at the aquarium yesterday, I didn't witness that once. I thought that was really interesting. Something that was also interesting (but terribly inconvenient) was that there was no print zoo map to pick up anywhere. At all. We didn't even see one to buy. And no one was carrying them around. A map in one of the largest zoos in the world would have been nice.

I sent a few postcards yesterday. If you know me, you know that actually sending postcards that I buy, address, and write on is a REAL accomplishment. Go me! So if I am likely to have your address memorized...I may have sent you a card. Of course, it probably won't get there until I'm already back.

Here is something interesting about one of our roommates: he has been running around the world since August. He just met up with another guy who has been doing the same thing since around this time last year. How the heck do they do it? Not work for THAT long AND pay to travel the world? Our roommate said that he had originally intended to be here for two days but this is his tenth night. ??? Chris and I think that some rich daddies must be involved. They're young guys so we assume that they still live at home with the parents...you know, when they're not on vacation for the better part of a year!

Tomorrow is our last full day in Berlin. I'm sad to leave so soon but also really excited about heading to Paris. It's funny - we sort of planned an interesting two weeks. Berlin is having a huge celebration on the 23rd, but we will be in Paris. And the Cannes film festival was happening in Paris while we've been in Berlin. I swear I tried to look up events for each city and for some reason, I never came across these two BIG DEALS on the calendar!!! Oh well, c'est la vie. Ha!