This Dark Knight viral ad on the Berlin Wall leaves a lot to be desired.

Wow, that's a lot of blonds! Man, most advertising agencies in the States have all kinds of internal rules about portraying diversity in ads, but in Germany they don't even try to front; a lot of ads I saw all over Berlin were full of blond-haired, blue-eyed Teutonic supermen and superwomen.

A neat modern building behind the Reichstag.

I took this picture specifically because there's a really similar statue in Rittenhouse Park in Philly! I'm sure half of my friend's list knows what I'm talking about.

This is over near the East Side Gallery, the touristy part of the Berlin Wall that's still standing. These next few pics can give you some idea of the insane weather we had during our week in Berlin. The day started off bright and sunny and hot, and a minute later a huge black cloud rolled in and we were drenched and freezing and running for shelter. Repeat many times. It's weird getting sunburned AND getting my hair ruined by rain in the same day. I went through a lot of hairspray in Berlin.

This was the first time I've ever had a chance to get a glimpse between the walls, thanks to some construction they were doing; it's probably obvious from this pic, the Berlin Wall was actually two layers of walls, with all kinds of stuff in between like guards and barbed wire and dogs and everything. Side note, look at that storm cloud coming in! We were drenched five minutes later.

Another view from outside the outer wall, looking in at the inner.

Ha, okay, this is not part of the Berlin Wall, this is just some graffiti back near out hotel that I enjoyed very much. Berlin has maybe the most graffiti I've ever seen in any city. Most of it is hideous and I usually hate graffiti in general, particularly tags and other ugly and uninteresting nonsense like that, but Berlin had a pretty high ratio of interesting/clever/beautiful graffiti, and I enjoyed running across weird pieces like these every few blocks.

Now this, this is a masterpiece.

Not sure where I was exactly, but I love this view of the river and the sky and Alexanderplatz (with the big antenna) in the background with this very German-looking building which is a museum but I forget which one.

That night we found a delightfully charming and unpretentious bar in Kreuzberg, and took a moment to write postcards to Paris, New Jersey, and La Reunion.

Gah, this is some powerful stuff! Either me or the camera or the camera operator is malfunctioning.

The next morning we walked around the north part of the city to see a sand sculpture exhibit and, a stone's throw away, the medical history museum.

Sand sculptures! This was fun, but the probably the biggest rip-off in Berlin. Six Euros (that's nine bucks!) to look at about a dozen big sand sculptures, which gets boring after about fifteen minutes. Berlin is generally a really inexpensive city and this is the one thing we did that I regretted a little. We'd actually misread the sign before going in and thought it was three Euros, but it turns out that was the kid price. No big deal, this sort of thing happens sometimes when you don't speak/read the local language. As traveling misadventures go it's really, really not so bad.

Sand sculptures!

Please enjoy the sand sculptures!

If I take enough pictures maybe I'll feel less bad about spending nine dollars to look at a few sand sculptures!

Next was the medical history museum, which I adore, but unfortunately you're not allowed to take pictures in there. So you'll have to settle for this wonderful scene I found right after the museum whilst wandering around town aimlessly. I should send them my resume; I think I'm a great fit for whatever it is they're doing.

Our aimless wandering led us right into this beautiful cemetery. Please note the various video game power-ups on the gate.

I love cemeteries like this, lush and green and so peaceful. We don't do this kind of cemetery in France. This scene actually reminds me a lot of a few cemeteries I saw in Transylvania.

Well I'll be, it's Bertolt Brecht's grave! I certainly wasn't expecting that. That was great.

Wow, this is weird; I can't even imagine a reason someone would have this image on their tombstone. The hangman image makes this look like a very old-fashioned (not to mention very morbid) scene, but the date of death is 1992, and the figure on the right is wearing a modern suit and tie! So many things here don't add up.

After the cemetery, I noticed this building covered in horseshoe prints. The bottom floor was closed up at the time, but we ended up walking by the same place a few nights later and it turned out to be a bar, so we went in for a drink. I can't think of a good joke about how you can lead a horse to beer but something something.