DAY 6: BERLIN

Our second day in Berlin involved visiting a lot of the historical/touristy sites. Like a portion of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie. I just have to share this pic of the boys looking through the wall. You can almost imagine what it was like for the actual Berliners.We wanted to watch the U.S. v. Ghana match that afternoon. Unfortunately, the other game showing at the exact same time was Italy v. the Czech Republic. Needless to say, most of the TVs in Berlin were tuned to the Italy game. So we couldn't just go to any bar to find the U.S. game. We called the U.S. embassy for suggestions, and ended up at a bastion of all Americaness, the Hard Rock Cafe. (ok, and the sad thing is that this is the second Hard Rock I've eaten at in Europe. The first one was in Rome, but that time, I had broken down after a few months and wanted some chicken fingers.) We needed to go to the Hard Rock anyway, cause Nick has a pin collection.

So when we arrived, the restaurant was still pretty empty. We got seated in a small section where there were a ton of TVs. From my seat, I could see 6 different screens. And we were told that they'd play the game in a larger room if more people showed. Which happened about 5 minutes after we were seated. We were moved to the main room and we were surrounded by fellow Americans. It was also cool cause they had the Italian game playing on some TV's (the results of that game and the game we were watching would determine who moved onto the next round, and ultimately, had the U.S. won, we would've moved on. ah well.)

We proceeded to order the typical Hard Rock cafe food. Nick got this massive brownie sundae. Ah, good ol' American excess.Rudes ordered Buffalo Chicken Strips
And this Apple CobblerI'm not really gonna analyze the quality of the food. You can just visit your nearest Hard Rock to check it out for yourself. But here is a cool pick of Rudy with the screen in the background. You can kinda tell that it's the U.S. team captain (Reyna?) walking off the field. Ghana played a brutal game, and honestly, the U.S. team sucked. They did not deserve to move on. So even though we lost, I was happy to see the Italian team win.After the game, we wandered out into the street where there was a massive celebration going on by fans of Ghana (who knew there were so many Ghana fans in Berlin?). Meanwhile, not having eaten enough at Hard Rock, we found a super cool crepe stand. Why can't i have one of these in my apt? A dude making crepes whenever i want one.The guys ordered some simple crepes. Just sugar and cinnamon, but I ordered my all time favorite crepe, strawberries and nutella. Here is the crepe getting cooked.And here's a nice youtube video of my crepe getting finished up.


Here it is after we'd taken a few bites out of it. And it was delicious. They guy even sprinkled some sugar on top, which was great. And Roy went back for a second one.After this, we wandered around Fan Fest, which was a massive festival going on in the park. We ended the night at an Australian bar, where we watched Australia advance into the next round. They played great and I was really sorry to see them lose during the second round. Here, I leave you with a giant bunny at fan fest (don't ask me why it's the Duracel bunny rather than the Energizer bunny. Maybe they're having branding issues in Europe...)