Arriving in Berlin

Sunday, June 24, 2012

I arrived earlier this morning in Berlin.  Took a taxi from the train station to my hotel.    A beautiful room in a very elegant hotel. 

I walked around in the environs (well, a little farther than the environs) of the hotel – toward Potsdam Square (Potzdamer Platz). . . had a delicious and leisurely lunch, and walked around (quite) a bit more – stumbling into the area of the Holocaust Memorial and Brandenburg Gate.  When I saw the Memorial, I thought maybe it would be a nice place to daven minchah. . . but I decided otherwise.  It appears to be hundreds of tombstones—though it isn’t.  Not meaning to be critical, it just didn’t seem like the place to daven. . . I didn’t spend much time at either of those places, as I know that I will be back on tour with the group later this week. 

There are, of course, very interesting displays about the history and remnants of the Berlin Wall.  I looked at some of those and took a fair number of photographs.

I went back out this evening for the dessert from my lunch (was still too full to have another meal) – and ended up in pretty much the same place, as Sunday evening is not a time that a lot of stuff is open.  I DID walk in the other direction from the hotel first, just to check out the neighborhood a little bit. 

Between my hotel and Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, a collection of museums and other arts buildings including the Philharmonic Hall.  I was excited to see that there was a great Tchaikovsky tonight. . . at 8:15 p.m. . . I would have gone, but realized when I checked it out at the hotel that the concert (not surprisingly) wasn’t at the Philharmonic Hall—but was instead at the summer home of the orchestra in another section of the city –and was sold out anyway. 

Back at the hotel catching up with some e-mail, phone calls, etc., I remembered that tonight was another “exciting” European Cup Quarterfinal Match between Italy and England.  I forgot about until it should have been over.  Checked online and saw that they were about 110 minutes in, tied 0-0. . . so I brought it up on the television.  Sure enough, it ended scoreless at the conclusion of regulation plus overtime. . . so they decided the match by playing a DIFFERENT game – penalty kicks.  This just drives me NUTS about soccer.  Can you imagine in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final if they played and played and played to a tie and then decided it on a shoot-out (the way they do during the regular season. . . something I don’t particularly appreciate either)?!  In any case, the custom is for each time to have up to 5 chances to score on penalty kicks until someone prevails.   Italy fell behind, but then England started missing.  So Italy clinched it when they scored on their 5^th try.  That put them up 4-2 (I think that’s what it was). . . so there was no point in England taking their 5^th kick.  Of the 9 kicks, only one of the goalkeepers made one save.  They dove toward the “off” (weak) side a number of times, which didn’t make much sense to ME, since EVERYONE (except one) went for the strong side. 

Okee dokee. . . it’s early where YOU are, but late where I am.  .  . so that’s it for now.