Adventures of Wes and Laura

Berlin Marathon and another day trip

The Berlin Marathon rolled and ran its way right down our street Sunday morning, which was wonderful post- egg and pancake breakfast entertainment. Haile Gabreselassie, an Ethiopian, was the winner. We saw him run by in the lead pack - he’s the one in red. He pulled out alone after passing us and finished just a minute over the world record. Ethiopians captured the first two places in both the men and women’s categories. We clapped and cheered on what was a very fit international group of participants (almost 40,000 total) – Laura yelled in Spanish to a few Peruvians (shirts said “Peru”),each of whom yelled “Gracias” back – I yelled for one guy with a USA shirt on who waved back, but we didn’t see any Costa Ricans – not to say that none were there.

The weather is unusually warm and dry right now for early Fall, and yesterday went an hour north, again with the bikes on the train, to Murtiz National Park, in a region of pristine lakes, fields and forest. The train network that enables us to get out and around these beautiful places. The smooth and timely operation of the trains, the the way the very modern trains integrate seemlessly into even the small town rural frozen-in-time landscape is really impressive. Yesterday, for instance, we were a little be over ambitious again with our route plan, given that we had to traverse some off-road trails with our skinny tire bikes and consult the map at every other intersection, so we decided to cut it short. Luckily we found a tiny little town along the train tracks, from which we could get a train heading back to a larger town from where we could go back to Berlin. A train arrived on perfect schedule and then we had just enough time (5 minutes) to connect to next train to Berlin. From Postdamer Platz in Berlin we bike 10-15 mins back to our apartment. Its all just amazingly convenient, moreso than having ones own car, which we see no need of in Berlin. We celebrated at a Vietnamese restaurant back in Schoeneburg with a delicous German Hefeweizen they had on tap, a wonderful bowl of our favorite Pho soup, and cones of Hazelnut ice cream – one of our most satisfying meals thusfar, and one that I would guess you couldn’t find together outside of Berlin.

posted by Wes and Laura @ 9/26/2006 09:33:00 AM