AND... I didn't do anything wreckless

Today was fantastic. Class was... what it was, not too tough. We got out of German class 30 minutes early, and so I cooked my lunch of ramen (mushroom flavored) with a fried egg on top (delicious), folded my laundry, and headed out for an entire day in Berlin.

I started at a stop away from where my uncle lives (though he is currently in Indonesia) and walked... pretty damn far. I discovered this humongous park by his house which has a Freiluftkino, or Open air theatre which plays movies at 9:45 every night for the entire summer. Auf Deutsch. I'm actually really excited to go to these.... and yeah. Awesome.

There are an unbelievable number of tasty food joints, cheap ice cream cafes, and other unreasonably cool things around my Uncle's apartment. Kreuzberg really is pretty damn cool. I walked around for maybe three miles in my flippy-floppies today, causing some minor blisters... but the 50 cent investment in an apple and Brötchen totally made things way better.

I walked by several tasty Vietnamese restaurants, and have finally decided that there are really enough good Asian food places to keep me afloat. I love the Wurst, but I also love the rice--an affinity and habit I expect to stay with me the rest of my life.

I killed a lot of time walking in directions that I think I will eventually need to recognize given that I'm working around that area during the summer, and then killed some more time looking through souvenirs to get people for my kleine Pause (small break) in den USA (in the USA). I was mostly unsuccessful. So it went.

To my pleasant surprise I stumbled upon a brand new vietnamesische und japanische Restaurant, so everything had a 20% discount! And it was "SOOO GOOOD." Srsly.

I decided it was late enough to attempt to wait in line to get into the Reichstag, the Parliament of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany), on which a glass dome rests. People can walk up the glass dome and stare down into the Parliament chamber, where the government makes the rules, to symbolize the transparency of the German government. It's pretty fantastic. There is so much about the German system that I really find fascinating.

We learned in German class the other day about how the German vote for Parliament works. Every can vote for certain people running in their district, their so-called erste Stimme (first vote), and their zweite Stimme (second vote) goes NOT to a single person, but to a party. From every district, the candidate with the highest percentage gets a direct route to Parliament, but at the end of the day there is also a certain % distribution of the votes of the entire country.

From this percentage, the REST of the Parliament is filled. For example, if the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) gets 50% of the vote, but only has 20% of the Parliament filled with its candidates who got directly elected, that means that it can fill up the other 30% with its candidates from it's LIST. The list is a ranking of candidates' right to enter the party in order to fill up this extra percentage, and this list is available to the public while voting. In other words, the party can choose to put really smart people, not necessarily just smart talkers or smoozing politicians, in high places on this list, and then hope that these smart people can get in.

I was talking to my host-brother about this, and he said that a lot of TEACHERS and PROFESSORS actually enter politics--and that the current Chancellor, Angela Merkel used to be a Professor--as well as the Minister for the Environment, incidentally.

In all, it was a fantastic day which followed a fantastic weekend in Madrid. I learned so much about the Spanish lifestyle. Mealtimes are almost nonexistent breakfast, a 2PM brunch, and a 10PM dinner. Isn't that ridiculous? The Stanford students there are on a language pledge, and are more "immersed" in the "native culture" than we are--but I've decided that they are merely different programs to serve different purposes. The lessons I've learned--managing time, living alone, how to keep myself preoccupied, how to travel smart, how to cook for small groups of people, how to shop smart, how to live in a big city, and how to be myself OUTSIDE of the Stanford (in palo alto) bubble--these are priceless.

Oh, and what I did in Berlin? I ate a LOT. Patatas Bravas are my new favorite spanish snack--well, tortillas are pretty damn tasty too. What a great trip. An amazing way to top off my traveling ventures this quarter.

I look forward to couch surfing during the summer, and I really hope I get around to it!

Anywho, that is all for now. Thanks for reading all of this (that even includes you, person who calls me "baby boy" even though I deeply detest it.)