Berlin by bike

We accidentally slept in until 10:30 today. This has been a problem the whole trip thus far; it gets light so early that I can't gauge the time at all. 6 AM outside looks like 9, which looks like 11.
So we struggled out of bed and Finn ran to the neighborhood bakery for a huge selection of pastries that we couldn't possibly finish. Not that we weren't encouraged to try, since Finn kept pushing the donuts and his mother kept handing us cherries and peanut butter. Sightseeing was also discussed: apparently we were going to bike Berlin today. I helped clean up the kitchen and went to change into biking-appropriate clothes.

We left the house much later than planned because we had to assign and adjust the bikes; Finn's parents and sister graciously planned for us to borrow theirs, so seats had to be lowered and tires checked, and a demonstration was required of me to prove I wouldn't tumble off.
Then we went. And it was terrifying.

Berlin has a stunning array of accessible bike lanes and paths, and bicycles are at the top of the traffic food chain; both cars and pedestrians actively try to get out of their way. You can go for surprisingly long distances at high speeds without having to dodge a single thing or stop... which is extremely disconcerting, to those of us who a) have been taught a fear of getting close to multi-ton cars and b) have no idea what they're doing on a bicycle. The last time I rode a bike was a good eight years ago, with no practice since. The experience reminded me most of kayaking lessons, where most of your forward momentum is provided by sheer panic. Finn led, and led quickly; Andie and I had to chase the boys the whole way, with occasional stops for us to catch up with them.
I had a tough time.

5 minutes in: "Are we anywhere close?"
15 minutes: "I'm bleeding."
25 minutes: "You're sure this isn't part of the Tour de France?"
Arrival: "...And how long until we need to get back on these things?"

Anxiety aside, I didn't fall off and I didn't run into anything (minus one close encounter with a tree), but I cut my leg on a pedal and I don't balance well. The other cyclists whizz around you in the bike lane, confident in their road superiority--which doesn't help if you're already wobbly. Those poor passersby pedestrians never knew how close they came to being collision targets this morning.
For a better illustration of the Carrie-bike relationship, I direct you here.

We were racing to get to the Reichstag, the parliament house, because they book visiting hours by reservation. We arrived at 12:45 for a 12:30 appointment, but somehow still got in. After a security check and metal detector scan, you're let into the building and elevators up to the upper dome. It's a giant glass structure striped by walking ramps up to the top level, all narrated by a very dry audioguide who has no idea what direction you're looking as it tries to tell you about the skyline features of Berlin.
The more interesting story is that the observation dome sits directly over the parliament chamber and is ingeniously engineered with alternative energy devices. A large mirrored funnel in the center reflects light into the chamber, the open top circulates the warm stale air out, and there's a rain-catching well under the opening that channels rainwater to heat or cool the building. The huge shade shape is... well, a sunshade, cutting the cooling costs of the building.
We poked around and admired the view from the roof of the Reichstag and compared notes about the tour; Andie was impressed with the language used, calling the Nazi regime the "National Socialist reign of tyranny" and the Holocaust Memorial in honor of the "murdered Jews". Strong, condemning terms.

Finn took pity on me when we left and just walked the bikes over the Brandenburg Gate, which is just around the corner. We took pictures and chatted with three recently acquired members of our group: two British boys and a girl, a friend of Finn's. As usual, I didn't catch names. (I did later: it's Lovis, with friends from her foreign exchange trip in England, Jack and Liam.)
From there, we went to the Holocaust Memorial. It's an entire city block of concrete stelae, just huge rectangles set up in a perfect grid that create a blind-corner, labyrinth effect among the tallest ones. Each square inch of concrete is supposed to represent so many deaths.
We appreciated the composition for a while, then wandered in. I started an extremely irreverent but geographically genius game of tag, with everyone running around corners into each other, lying in wait, or accindentally jumping out at perfect strangers. (At least we weren't the tourists climbing on the columns.)

When everyone got tired and wandered out, Finn took us to the nearest mall for lunch (~3 PM). He and Andie got Leberkäse, which are large ham loaf sandwiches, very authentically German with a small bun and lots of brown mustard. I was too hungry and jumped for the imitation Chinese place that smelled the best. (It didn't taste that way.) We walked around the mall and ran into another of Finn's friends (a lovely, dark, slim girl, though I never caught her name), and then all decided to go out to the park.

The park in question is the Tiergarten, the second-largest park in Berlin. It's mostly trees and bike paths, interspersed with open fields, fountains, ponds, and memorials. Finn, Andie, and I biked slightly ahead and somehow managed to completely lose Aaron and the rest; we stopped at a pond just past the German composers memorial and waited, laying out and talking while Finn tried calling them. They never found us. Instead, we were summoned to the next planned sightseeing stop: the Siegessäule, the Berlin Victory Column.

This thing is a memorial to the Franco-Prussian War, or so we gathered from talking to several Germans who really had no idea about it. There are bronze bas reliefs all the way around the pedestal (some of them still damaged from WWII shelling), a small museum in the bottom level (that runs out of things to tell you and starts in on other large world monuments), mosiacs in the middle terrace, and enough stairs to put a lighthouse to shame. They spiral up and up, with a small landing every few flights that taunts you with a single chair. The top is heavily fenced in and extends barely three feet out, so everyone was climbing over each other to rotate around and get photos of Berlin from every possible angle.

We walked back down, parted from the group, and Finn led us back to his house at a somewhat slower, if no less wobbly, pace.
He said we were going to a friend's house for a barbeque, so we stopped in at supermarket for raw meat (apparently that was the polite-guest thing to do). We then showed up at a complete stranger's apartment (Finn had never actually been there, either) and were ushered through to a decent-sized patio with a table set and small grill-- and next to no light. Someone got out tea lights later, but we spent most of the evening squinting at our plates. The brother of the apartment owner was visiting and had worked as a chef for a few years, so the food was excellent. We mostly sat at our end of the table and tried to make small talk until Lovis and the Brits showed up; then we had a whole English-speaking side of the table, which Aaron took to with a will. The night eventually devolved into the Germans talking among themselves and Aaron and the boys showing each other things on their phones. I was so tired. We finally left after 1 AM, right as I was on verge of throwing plates at anyone who would've asked us to stay longer, and went straight to bed.