Sausages, Beer, Love Parade, Old Walls, Recent History - It must be Berlin

Ahh Berlin, one of my favourite cities I have visited in Europe. I don't know what it is about this city, maybe it's the huge amount of history mixed with continuous change, or the nice people in such a huge city, or the party attitude or the numerous American fastfood chains, or the good shopping, I don't know - it's just great. I wish we had been able to stay more than 2 days, but alas, that is the life of a working girl, this time I wasn't a backpacker.
Cari and I woke up bright and early Saturday morning (5am) to take the 3 hour train to Berlin Zoo Station. We arrived a little tired and a little hungry. We ate some yummy pastries from the train station and wandered across the street to the McDonalds (a familiar place, Tina and I ate there). There we decided to join the Insiders Tour of Berlin. Tina and I had done this tour 3 years ago and really liked it. So Cari and I decided to walk around Berlin for 4.5 hours with them. The weather was crappy - cold and rainy and we had thought it was going to be nice. So we had no rain jackets, no sweaters and no toques. But we braved it and did an excellent tour. What did we see? Just about all the major sites in the city centre: Museum Island, the Jewish Synagogue, markets, churches, Hitler's bunker which is now a carpark with no markings, remains of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Reichstag parliament buildings, Brandenburg Gate, the hotel Michael Jackson held the baby out the window from, the Victory Tower, the Jewish memorial.....Most of it I had seen before, but we did get to hear some stories that I had either forgotten or were different from the tour I did before. There were some new buildings up that weren't there 3 years ago, and we got to actually see Brandenburg Gate this time - last time construction was being done on it and it was covered up. Even though I had done it before, I thoroughly enjoyed the tour again.
After freezing our asses off for 4.5 hours, we decided to head out to the ILA Berlin Air Show. It took about an hour to get there so we didn't arrive until 3:30 or so. We spent most of the time walking around trying to find Rob Curbeam ("Beamer"), the NASA astronuat we were supposed to met up with and sleep on his hotel room floor. However, we couldn't find him and eventually just asked if anyone had seen him - apparently he had left at about 3 - so we just missed him. But we got to see some cool planes and the French team (like the Snowbirds) put on a good show. We got kicked out at 6pm when it closed and took the long train journey back into downtown. We went to the tourist office to find out where Beamer's hotel was and discovered it was way out by the airport, where we had just come from! So I also asked where Chris and Nicole's hotel was, and it was just across the street. So we headed there. The Intercontinental Berlin - pretty damn nice. We had a coffee there with them and then went out for dinner to a pub. It was awesome to hang out with them again and to see their friend Scott too.
We finally got in contact with Beamer at 11:30 and decided that it was too much to take an hour+ long train out there to sleep on his floor. So we decided to just stay in a hostel. I called one from Scott's room that was supposed to be 5 mins away - they had beds. So we went there and the guy said, 'no we are full'- I was like I just called you. But there are 3 hostels in Berlin owned by this same company and they all use the same 1-800 number, apparently. The guy on the phone hadn't even said which hostel it was, and I even asked him if it was right across from the Zoo train station, and he said it was - ahh language confusion I guess. So we made the "maximum 15 minute" train journey to the other hostel. An hour later, we arrived. It was now 2am and we were wandering the streets of Berlin, hmm, good idea. But we made it safely and finally fell into our beds at 2:30am.
Next morning we went back to Checkpoint Charlie and to the Topography of Terror at the Wall. We looked for souvenirs and took some pics. We decided to go back to the airshow in the afternoon as it turned out to be a really nice day. There, we just laid outside watching the planes go by. Cari ran into Beamer, but I just missed him again - does he really exist???? I talked to him on the phone, but that doesn't mean anything :) We saw the Swiss acrobatic team and they were really good. We saw a giant Airbus Super Transporter that looked like you could fit 10 planes inside of it, or at least a space station module for sure. There were all sorts of cool planes, but since I don't know anything about planes, I couldn't tell you what they were. Maybe Cari will say on her blog.
After the air show, we went back to Zoo Station and walked past the zoo and into the main park. We hung out at the Victory Tower for a bit, chilling in the sunshine. We ate currywurst for dinner - coke, sausage, and fries for 3€! Oh and we had Dunkin Donuts for dessert. I tried the radioactive orange flavoured one and it was surprisingly tasty.
We caught the 8pm train home and arrived home last night at 11:30 - exhausted but happy to be in out own beds. It's nice to pretend to be a backpacker for a bit, but it's even nice to have your own bed to come home to.
All in all, it was a great weekend, I just wish the weather had been nicer the entire time, and that we had had more time to visit a Museum or something. Now we have a 3 day recovery period before our next trip begins!!!!