I am *not* a doughnut.

My friend Mona, who is basically made of the awesome, invited me to spend a week with her family in Berlin. Naturally, I accepted, because if Germany produced Mona, who is made of the awesome, than Germany itself must also be made of awesome.

Plus there's the whole bit with Berlin housing the Pergamon Altar.

I can't even describe it properly. Just go, if you ever have the chance. There's a million photos of it online, but there's no way to compress the scale of it into words. The stone breathes, okay? It's crumbling and half of the gods are missing faces but you can see the agony in the faces of the giants and feel the ground beneath them, the yank of Athena's fingers in their hair. . .

I don't care that this type of sculpture is outdated and based on a false ideal and no one makes it anymore. It's the closest thing to magic I've ever seen.

Beyond that, Mona's family spoiled me rotten. First off, her mother is a fantastic cook. I haven't eaten so well in a long time. Besides simply letting me stay in their home and giving me food -- which, FYI, is probably the easiest way to get me to like you as I'm a slave to my stomach -- Marion and Peter also decided to take Mona and I out for a day. We toured the Charlottenburg Palace, which was a mix of several different eras' worth of architecture and art styles. Mona and I spent several minutes gaping like idiots at one of the ceilings. Ceiling murals are of course rather common in royal buildings, but this combined sculpture with two-dimensional art, flowers and trees and clouds blending together, shaded so well and put together so carefully that we honestly couldn't tell what was flat and what had relief anymore.

(So I can't hold a camera straight.)

Marion also caught me staring at a certain sculpture on display in the gift shop, and not only told me a bit about its history (the statue was hidden for a century or so because it was "too free") but also bought me a postcard with a print of it, along with one of a portrait Mona and I had admired and a view of the palace itself. Peter was a veritable encyclopedia of information, too, frequently translating the German explanations of each room of the palace and adding his own insight. Afterwards, he took us on a drive around Berlin. Honestly, it was more of an auto tour, and it was wonderful. He adores his city and knows the history as only a Berliner could, his voice occasionally cracking with emotion as he searched for the right words to give me the best possible idea of his meaning.

The day was topped off with organic ice cream, and Germany is serious about its ice cream. If you're an American like me, think of what we take as "gelato," then think even richer. (And remember what I said about them spoiling me? They wouldn't let me pay for anything.)

Mona also toured the city with me when the two of us weren't busy revising for exams. I got to see the "mountain" of Berlin, try very authentic Sicilian pizza (delicious. Okay, maybe the pineapple wasn't authentic, but the crust was, and the cooks tried to speak to us in Italian. . .Mona was actually able to order in Italian, since she actually knows useful foreign languages), eat a wurst (also delicious) and take a picture with a giant Lego giraffe. Oh, and more ice cream. I think we had ice cream pretty much every day we were there -- lucky for me, Mona's sweet tooth is as bad as mine!

I wasn't being sarcastic.

Mona also threw a barbeque as a quick reunion with a lot of her friends; I got to help set up and even run the grill for a bit, since I was one of the few guests who was not only a non-vegetarian, but also not grossed out by touching raw meat.

At the end of the trip, Mona's parents thanked me for coming (yes, there were hugs) and I bought them flowers and then Mona's and my plane got delayed for over an hour. After we'd gotten through security. I also got to spend something like two and a half hours waiting in customs to get back into the UK, and had an absolutely fantastic interaction with a condescending customs agent -- but you know what? I'm going to save that for another post, because the actual trip was far too awesome to discolour with snark.

The Lion King and other things

On the 13th of April, Mona and I took a trip into London to have lunch and see a show. Being children of the 90s, we decided that The Lion King was a necessity, and being tourists, we wanted to eat in Chinatown.

First, the lunch. We pretty much ducked into the first place we saw that wasn't a buffet, which may have been a mistake. Mind you, the food was fantastic. Mona had a salt-and-pepper tofu dish, which she said was the best tofu she had ever been served; I had a beef and ginger dish, which was likewise delicious. They also served somewhat "upscale" drinks -- fresh juices and bubble tea among them. Again, everything was delicious, and we finished with a good forty-five minutes to spare before our show.

It was when we got our bill that we began having problems. We were handed a printed receipt with the food listed only in Chinese (I assume Mandarin, but honestly it could have been any dialect and I wouldn't have known the difference), and only the total price given as opposed to the price of each dish. This total seemed a bit off to me, and a quick mental check of what I remembered the listed prices of our food as indicated that something was wrong. We snagged another copy of the menu and totalled everything up. We'd been overcharged by a good eight pounds or so, even allowing for a 12% added gratuity fee. Okay. No problem. We flagged down a waiter and explained the issue. This took a good seven to ten minutes, as his English wasn't exactly fluent and he probably had trouble with both of our accents.* He took the bill back up, and we assumed that the problem would be quickly rectified and we'd be on our way with still some time to spare.

Twenty-five minutes later...we were handed another copy of the bill. We were still overcharged (possibly; again, it wasn't like we could read the receipt very well) but had no time to continue haggling. We booked it out of there, promptly got lost, and ended up asking a guy selling discount theatre tickets for directions to the Lyceum. We ran there and made it with some minutes to spare, though we were both out of breath.

Totally worth it.

If you like massive puppets and crazy-awesome dancing and African-inspired chant and gorgeous costuming and lions and stuffy British accents, you'd love this show. I'd never seen professional puppetry on this scale before, so I spent the entire show gawking and gasping and generally making a right fool of myself. Mona and I both left the theatre grinning like idiots. My inner child has yet to shut up about the whole thing.

(So, naturally, I wait a month before posting...I am bad at blogging. Bad blogger. Lazy.)

UNRELATED:
A short blurb of mine has been picked up by The Colchester Circle for publication! It will appear in either the June or July issue! Celebrations! Jubilations! Exclamation points!


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*Mona is German, though her English is excellent and really is only accented when she's very tired and/or stressed. I'm American, and thus don't actually speak English at all.