More Berlin!

So, yesterday was actually pretty fabulous after we got the grumping over and got out of the hostel. We took our time walking through what had to be most of East Berlin trying to find a park to play about it. We found what we THOUGHT was a park, but it was really just a parking place for dead people. A really, really big parking spot, to be fair. We must have walked a half mile or more trying to get out of it. Luckily the park was only another jaunt away so we just hopped over (well, half a mile hopped but what is that when you've already gone two or so miles?) and found a place to park it in the shade.
Get it? Park it? I'm killing myself laughing here. (Chirp chirp, I know)
So, we had a good time playing hackey sack, or footbag or whatever you want to call it, and then we had siesta time. We spread out underneath a big tree and just lay there, some sleeping (Air) and others dozing or just cloud watching (C and I). I listened to some nice music, watched the clouds drift past the trees, and generally had a good time of it. Then we came back, checked in, and then got ready to wander about outside again to find this supposedly really awesome beergarten in what we think is Berlin's Little 5. Well, we found it but it was a little too hipster/hippie/alternative/whatever for us then, so we scarpered and found another little park to play hack in. However, we did come across very heavily armed and protected German polizei wandering the streets after 8, 8:30 so we ambled back. A successful day, all in all.
Today (the 18th) we went out for one of the new europe free walking tours, because the tours in Munich were awesome (I'll talk about those later!) and were slightly disappointed by it here. Firstly, though, I'll set the scene. We are situated in an eight bed dorm and the sun comes up around 5 here, so people start just getting restless about then. Our room is directly across from the kitchen, which means that it can get a little loud as people start to meander to breakfast. Otherwise it's a fairly quiet little hostel. Well, breakfast was actually pretty good, we bought eggs yesterday and we scrambled those and had watermelon. So, fed and water(meloned) we moved out. I'm not sure when Air started the "eeerrrggghhhh" mood, but she was in full-on don't talk to me, I've got earbuds and a frown mode by the time we made it to the Sbahn (the overground trains, the underground ones are the Ubahn, creative little Germans, huh?). So, we amble the kilometer to the meeting point to find that this tour is over a hundred people, granted they do separate out but still, that's a lot of people. So we made the choice to o anyways and, being free, we could always leave if we didn't like it.
Our guide was nice, but you could tell he'd been too long in the job: he knew his stuff but wasn't really excited about it at all. His presentation made all the Nazi and Soviet talk more boring that it needed to be. Berlin was 95% rubble at the end of WWII, so there wasn't much of the 700-odd year history left to stare at, so all we saw and heard about what the post war era. Fair, but kinda got old. We made it to the Wall and Checkpoint Charlie (over commercialized and not at all what it was 20 years ago) but after that we decided it was too hot (and boring) to keep going. So, here we are, catching up on football and writing blogs :)

Happy travels, I has them.