Swimming

I visited a real class, finally.
Lead by a striking woman with cat glasses, ironic smiles and...dressed professor-chic in plum velvet.
So I got my first look at how the humanities classes work (or don't) at Humboldt. More on this later.
Oh, right, and the class was zur Philosophie der Gefühle.

Then I went and did the most tourist-y activity EVER.
I took a boat tour around the middle ‘museum’ island. Sightseeing by ship. It was actually fabulous. I had to admit I liked it, and highly recommend it to anyone who visits. (So now you will have to excuse a few tourist pictures, which you can easily find instead on postcard stands citywide, or the internet sites about Berlin.)
The announcer man, who talked all about the history of the buildings we passed, would surface on deck every once in a while and pretend to get hit repeatedly on the head by the low bridges crossing the Spree.
The Spree is the river that flows through Berlin. It splits and creates a little island where there are a bunch of museums near Unter den Linden, where the stadtschloss (the prussian palace) used to be located. When the original was destroyed during the war the Palast de Republik was built, a great rubiks cube of reflective bronze-orange glass. Considered a bitter reminder of the East after the wall fell, and an eyesore, it is being torn down, as you read this, so that a faithful new replica of the original palace can be built. With all the zero money that the city has.
People are, of course, complaining that the old newer palace was itself a landmark and have plenty of nostalgia for its bronzed glass, fallen victim more expensive and abstract nostalgia.

Then I just walked. for. hours.
Used to the overwhelming, but highly concentrated ny, it isn't easy to realize just how spread out this city is. But I am finding more and more that there is such a lot of space.
not least where you can't see it, as in hinterhofs...but more on these later.