Continuing the recap

One thing I completely forgot to mention is the abundance of Christmas markets here in town. That's where you can get Glühwein and where you can see people dressed as monsters scaring kids :) All the things you can buy is quite similar to what's generally in Hungary at such a market, though the subtle differences are here. For example there are quite a few Arabic or Turkish people selling their products, generally related to water pipe smoking :)
Sunday started late again, and also at one such market, on the Bretscheideplatz, next to the Zoo. This square usually has quite a few shady characters loitering, but now it was all dressed up for the holidays, and that drove out the dark figures too :) I showed my friends the water clock with the green liquid in it, and after having a snack and some hot wine in the market, we headed for the Victory Column, or Siegessaule, with the public sightseeing bus. And on the bus we were overheard again, this time by an elderly lady, who was originally from Hungary :) She was very nice, though she got a bit confused and used German and Hungarian all mixed up :) But for one living in Germany for 50 years now, she spoke her mother tongue a lot better than that waitress from last week did after 4 years of being away... So anyhow, the Tiergarten park and the Column were both great, again, with wonderful weather, the sun shining brightly in a clean sky. The trees are a lot different compared to early October, when I last visited the park - back then everything was still mostly green, but now it's only shades of brown and red everywhere :) It's very interesting to look at the pictures, for me, seeing the same sight basically in two completely different colours. I did not make pictures of the park, though, because I did not want to climb the Column again.
So when all the others came down, we crossed the park and took the Unter den Linden road to the heart of the East, the Alexanderplatz. It was quite a long walk, with a lot of people nearing our goal, everyone out to do some shopping. Because, of course, the shops are open for a lot longer time now that Christmas is here. One interesting thing was a Peugeot showroom, which did not sell usual street cars, but showed off some of the concept cars they have. Nice. You can also buy the in models or buy a Peugeot-branded salt shaker. The price is basically it's weight in gold :)
So, after Alexanderplatz we headed home to give the possibility for the girl in the gang proove once again what a great cook she is :) And she did just that, we had a very good pasta carbonara for dinner. Of course she wouldn't have been successful without our help in removing all those filthy full beer bottles from her way ;)
Finishing dinner we went out to meet a friend of her's who lives in Berlin. This friend showed us a great place where we had cheap, but good Berliner beer, and the foosball was all for free :) We only had to tolerate smoke, but it was okay. She also mentioned one other pub to visit, Morgenrot, which we put on the sights necessary to see immediately :) We were lucky enough to catch a late (or rather early) train home, she was less lucky, she had to take the bus :( I hope though that our company wasn't too bad for her :)
For me the evening ended when we arrived home, thought the other guys went out to find some nice place to wait for the dawn. I slept so well that I did not even hear them coming home. I just woke up for the snoring an hour later :)
The plan for Monday was visiting Potsdam, and checking out Sanssouci. This is exactly what we did and what I'm going to post about next :) Good to see that I'm a week behind myself :)

M.