we are now in Hamburg, having left Berlin yesterday afternoon, and will be leaving for Venice (via Munich and possibly Innsbruck) in 2 hours. because it would be virtually impossible to fully recap our past few days, I thought all y'all might enjoy some anecdotes from our time in Berlin (after which Kat will recap Hamburg).

1. Zitch Dog.
as we have mentioned previously, we met up with our friend Katherine in Prague. Katherine had recently been in Berlin, and proposed a game to us for while we were there. She had noted an unusually high percentage of pregnant women during her stay, and suggested that we count how many we saw. because Kat and I don't like to play games that can't be won, we decided to modify it see who could spot the highest number. in true How I Met Your Mother fashion, the phrase we chose for when we saw a pregnant woman was "Zitch Dog" (to avoid shouting and pointing, which could become awkward for all involved). what we learned while playing this game is that Kat and I are perhaps too competitive to play this form of Zitch Dog and do anything else at the same time, as our obsessive need to find the most pregnant women the fastest kind of inhibited our social interaction. we decided to cap the game at 15 (Kat won, despite a respectable last-minute surge by me), and all was well.

2. the incident that shall be known as "The Rat on the Subway" (note: not appropriate for the squeamish)
the same day as the above, Kat and I were sitting on an S-Bahn train, minding our own business, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a rat. I am aware that seeing rats on public transit is not actually that rare an occurrence, although the German system is clean enough that I imagine it would be rather rare. this rat, however, was someone's pet. a girl with pink hair was sitting on the train, holding a small black and white rat in. her. lap. Kat and I were flabbergasted. and also possibly a little horrified. when I noticed it, I gave what must have been the quietest shriek there has ever been (I did not want to exhibit bad manners, you see, even when faced with a rat on the subway. nor did I want to excite the rat). we spent the entire rest of our ride in states of extreme anxiety (and trying not to stare). this anxiety was heightened when she PLACED THE RAT IN HER HOOD. as Kat asked, "how on earth would the poor man sitting back to back with her feel if he turned around right now?"

addendum: now you might think that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime (or at least once-in-a-weekend) occurrence. au contraire, my friends. I saw another one when we arrived in Hamburg. at least this one had a cage, although when I saw him, he was not in it.

Right. We're in Hamburg, which has a distinctly different flavour than Berlin's. There's more water, being a port town, and when you see the word "Hamburger," food is not necessarily available. However, I think Alyssa misses Berlin because she has brought our Berlin games here. She still calls out Zitch Dog at the sight of any pregnant woman, even though I already won that game. And she thinks that we should categorize people according to the likelihood that they would bring a rat onto a train. For the record, the latter game is amazing and she is rightly proud of herself for conceiving of it.

The reason we're here is that my grandmother (or close enough) is from Hamburg. We found her family's old storefront this morning, which was quite a relief because it was in a neighbourhood that was not where we stayed last night. In other words, it was not surrounded by seedy clubs and strip joints ("Palaces"). Kids, maybe avoid the Reeperbahn.