Friends in all places

The weekend was awesome. It was nice to get out and use all the “free time” that I have and do something meaningful while waiting for the GC.
I took the train to Düsseldorf on Friday afternoon and from there the ICE straight to Berlin. It was a pleasant ride and it was on time :) My friend Gina and her little daugther Lara picked me up at the train station and then we drove back to their house which was about 50 minutes outside of Berlin.
I met her husband Henning and her other little daugther Lotta and we had dinner together. Lara had already lost her shyness and really started to like me which became clear in all her little games that she wanted me to get involved in. She was really adorable.
We stayed up till 1:00 a.m. waiting for out mutual friend Annie [from Stuttgart] to get there.

The next morning we all had breakfast together and then we, the girls, got ready to drive to Downtown Berlin. We were meeting some other girls at the “Route 66”, an American bar near the Kurfürstendamm. It very much reminded me of Jon’s and my favorite breakfast place in Ventura, the Busy Bee, because they had these cute red leather seats and little jukeboxes at every table.
I met two more of my penfriends there and we really had a fun time. We took a few pictures afterwards. We were quite a bunch of girls :)

At 4:30 p.m. we had to drive back to Gina’s place, because Henning was having a birthday-BBQ in their backyard this evening. It was really nice out and we had yummy food and some nice cocktails later on… a very good Caipirinha again :) [I think I might fall for this cocktail now!]

Ade, Sannie, Annie and Gina

Sunday morning we all slept in and had breakfast around 10:30 a.m.. We hung out at the house for a little longer and then at 2:30 p.m. Annie had to head back to Stuttgart and Henning was so nice to take me back to Berlin and drop me off at my friend Silke’s place in Friedrichhain.

Silke, Volker and I went to play tennis for an hour at a park. Silke and I used to play tennis together in our hometown back in the days and it was great to refresh the memories ;) We had some cold drinks at a Biergarten afterwards and then we went back to their apartment, took showers and went out to dinner at “Die Turnhalle“. It really is the gymnasium of an old Eastern school that was remodelled into a Restaurant-Café-Cocktailbar-Lounge which still has the old parquet flooring and ladders, basketball hoops and a viewing gallery. We sat outside in the Biergarten and had some really yummy food. Unfortunately I didn’t take any picture there.

I had most of Monday to myself, since Silke had to work that day. I got up at 9:00 a.m. and then took the subway to Downtown Berlin. I first visited and walked along the Eastside Gallery, a part of the old Berlin wall.

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Then I went to the Brandenburger Tor,

and then I met with our dear Ellen from Xanga at Prenzlauer Berg to have some coffee and cake. It was really great to get the chance to meet her and it really felt totally normal to hang out together :) [as you might have noticed: the waiter took the photo and made it all blurry oh well. Gotta do that again, Ellen!]

I also met with one of the girls from Saturday for some coffee in the later afternoon and then went back to Silke’s place to spend the evening with her. We decided to go to the Badeschiff and enjoy an open air-movie night. We brought some blankets, got something small to eat and a drink and then sat down in comfy canvas chairs to watch Rize – a documentary about a dance movement in the ghettos of L.A. It was really worthwhile.

Tuesday morning I took the train back home. It was a really fun time and I hope I will be able see all the girl again :) Distance sucks in many different ways sometimes.