Berlin part 1

It's only been a day and I've already got no idea how to descrcribe to you everything that I've experienced. This gigantic city has swallowed me up, and I'm thrilled by it.
We entered the city by an ICE train. Inter City Express, I think is what it stands for. What it means is plush. The cozy ride was more like your average intercontinental flight, the good kind, not the bad ones. Built in radio and a dining car included. Once I ran out of daylight and could no longer watch the scenery blur by I napped. We had over 6 hours of travel time, I think. It felt like 6 days.
I've mentioned already that this what a planned excursion. In other words, all 9 students, 3 professors, and 1 professor's wife came on this trip. So we were quite a loud corner of the train. Matt had a Kinder Egg the size of his head. The toy inside was a rotating music box with Steve Tyler leading a band of Christmas elves. Chris Heck played "Save the Last Dance" on his DVD player for Liz and Jen to watch, and everyone talked loudly the whole way.
We cleared the car out pretty quickly.
We arrived in Berlin at 9:45PM, found out hotel, which was actually a youth hostel, and crashed by 11:30.
Breakfast was bread and meat and cereal. I had cornflakes with cocoa on accident. I thought the cocoa was brown sugar. These places all seem to be badly lit. I also had a couple of extra rolls I stashed for lunch. They had no shortage, after all. I waited until they were closing the breakfast bar, then helped myself. They didn't seem to mind, and I wasn't about to watch those things get thrown away or, worse, put back out there for us tomorrow.
Our walking tour was a thorough 5 hours. I'm writing it up on a seperate page whenever I get time to go through my recording of it and match it up with my pictures (which, at this rate, will probably be after Christmas). I've got pictures accompanying most of the major highlights, though, and a few good stories as well. Our tour guide was an American student who'd come over here a few times and was now doing her grad work here. I am so jealous.
After the walking tour (so, around 3 PM) we ran over to the box office, bought tickets for the Blue Man Group Berlin Show, then ran off to the Bauhaus Archive. It's just me and Tiff at this point, by the way. The rest of the group moves too slow, and they didn't have to see the archive anyway.
Not that we saw any more than the lobby. They were closing, and thus not real interested in visiters. It was a really neat lobby, though.
We had enough time left to hurry to the room, change clothes, and go to the Blue Man Group show.
If you haven't gone to the BMG shows in Chicago, NYC, Vegas, or San. Fran., go. It was the most overwhelming sensory experience I can remember in recent memory. If you're unfamiliar with BMG, it goes something like this: three enigmatic bald and blue characters who take the audience through a multi-sensory experience that combines theatre, percussive music, art, science and vaudeville into a form of entertainment that is like nothing else. They discover food, music, science, love, joy, interaction, art, everything along with the audience. I'm doing it a terrible injustice, you just have to see the show. By the end of it everyone's revelling in the atmosphere, completely immersed in the show. Sample a little of it at www.blueman.com, but don't write it off there. See this show!
After the show we climbed the Reichstag dome. This is the same Reichstag that burned in the days of Hitler and sat desolate for the cold war years, by the way. In 1999 it became the home of Germany's government once more (a council of over 600 representatives, by the way), and they build this gigantic glass dome to celebrate it. In my pictures you can see a mirrored funnel down the middle of it. This lights the Bundestag, the council, with natural sunlight. it also lets out all the hot air through a hole in the top of the dome.
The view was great. We saw all the lights of the city. I discovered that my vertigo has gotten worse, or maybe it just doesn't like walking around open glass and steel. I made it, though, and genuinely enjoyed the view. I just had to take very small steps to do it.