Its Christmas Day night and I have to say that coming to Berlin was one of my better ideas. I’ve spent the day sleeping, reading, swimming, exercising, eating and drinking. Its been perfect!
Berlin is such an historic city, and I have only scraped the surface of it landmark-wise. I went on a night-time tour and saw all the biggies, Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, the Reichstag, all pretty phenomenal seen from the bus window. I’m sure they’re even better seen close up. Oh well, I might make it out there again tomorrow, if not, I’ll just have to come back won’t I?
Me being me, of course, I have managed to visit just about every single major shopping area in the city! You’d be horrified and concerned if I hadn’t wouldn’t you? As in the UK, a lot of the shops started their sales early, and I purposely brought a small suitcase so that I wouldn’t be tempted to go overboard.
That didn’t mean that I was gonna deny myself a special Christmas present if I saw something that tickled my fancy. I mean, it’d be disrespectful to Berlin not to splurge a bit wouldn’t it? So it was that I found myself in a massive department store called KaDeWe - sort of a German Harrods without all the self-importance - and there in the Prada concession was my little bit of Deutsche handbag heaven.
A fabulous dark brown leather bag, big enough to hold any amount of crap I might ever conceivably need, that was quietly classy not screamingly bling. It had been nearly £2000 and now it was far less than half price, how could I resist? I did try actually, I walked around the entire shop - the largest department store on the Europe mainland, trying to put it out of my mind, but in the end the pull was too great. So there you have it, happy xmas JoJo!
Yesterday on Christmas Eve I was up and out and at ‘em early. The city was due to shut down at 2pm and I wanted to see and do as much as I could. First stop was Berlin Zoo. It’s practically next door to the hotel so would’ve been churlish not to take a look. I’ve never been to a zoo in the middle of a snowy winter before, it’s a pretty desolate experience believe me.
My big thang of course, is monkeys of all shapes and sizes, and to be honest that was the only part of the zoo I was interested in. The baboons were the only ones living outside. They had big old furry coats, and there were loads of em. The big male put on a bit of a show for me - maybe with my black fur coat and hat (fake!) they thought I was a big monkey too! He started barking and it echoed throughout the zoo. The bark brought out a whole tribe who were hiding in one of the caves, one by one they emerged, some of them with the most gorgeous little babies clinging to their bellies and sitting on their backs.
I made my way into the monkey house and was in hog (or should that be primate) heaven! There were chimps, gorillas, gibbons, orang-utans, and an assortment of tiny little pocket monkeys that I’m sure I could’ve brought home with me. It was feeding time and the gibbons could see from their cage the man chopping up the fruit and veg. Boy were they excited! He hand-fed some little spider monkeys and it was a joy watching them each take a piece of fruit, run off and hide it, then come back for another!
Just when I thought I couldn’t absorb any more cuteness, I found a cage with these little Max Wall looking monkeys (I’m not being deliberately ignorant, the names were all in German!). One of them caught my eye and started looking at me from every angle. He ran up his tree and checked out the top of my head, then as he climbed down he mirrored every move I made. If I tilted my head to the right so did he, I felt like my heart would burst with joy! Definitely missed my calling I reckon. Maybe I should re-invent myself as ‘The Monkey Whisperer’!
Anyway, that’s been the real highlight of this trip, I mean the handbag is gorgeous, but the monkeys stole my heart!
Labels: Travel
