Berlin Germany

After a long day and night of traveling, I finally arrived in Berlin at about 10AM on the 9th of September. I napped for an hour or two here and there on the flight, but I was waiting for the food service before trying to sleep, and dinner wasn't served until near midnight I think. They served breakfast 3 or 4 hours after that, which woke me up out of a semi-sleeping state.

After taking a taxi to the Hotel Carat (recommended) on Ollenhauerstraße, I decided it'd be best to set up my bike and take a look around. I wasn't that tired surprisingly, and I knew I should stay up until night time if possible so that I could adjust to the 6 hour time difference.

After some trouble with my bike, and finding a bike shop very close to the hotel on Auguste-Viktoria-Allee, I headed the opposite direction down the street which turned into Humboldtstraße. I didn't bike for long when I noticed what looked like a park of some sort to my right. After taking a turn into the "park", I realized it was actually a cemetery. It was an incredibly well kept one, so it was very nice. I must have seen 8 different people with watering cans in random parts of the cemetery.



I went back to the hotel to get my wide angle lens because I really liked one of the churches there (last one pictured above).

When I was finished, I biked down Müllerstraße or some street nearby. There was a really cool looking building with an Apotheke (pharmacy) on the ground floor. Apotheken are nearly as common as bakeries (Bäckerei, plural Bäckereien), Imbiss (unsure of plural but they're food stands/diners), and bike shops. Of course in the inner cities bike shops aren't as common, but they seem to have a lot of them in the outer areas. Biking is extremely popular in Germany.



As I continued to bike, I somehow ended up in another cemetery..I didn't stay long though.



I biked around aimlessly for the entire day, getting lost and not caring. Most of the time I was in the Prenzlauer Berg area, though I wasn't aware at the time of course.

Below is a picture of the Prenzlauer Berg, Wasserturm, built in 1877. Today it's been renovated into an apartment complex, but I wouldn't want to live there. Between 1933-1945, the engine house in the tower was an "unofficial prison" used by the SA. The tower's considered "The unofficial symbol of Prenzlauer Berg".



Here is a church. I know nothing about it currently. I tried to research it but didn't find anything!



A random street I took a picture of..



Graffiti. I took a picture because it made a mention of the USA..not a very good message really. I believe it translates into "Against the aggression of the USA".



Just a building near the graffiti. It may be something, but I don't know what. This whole area had a gate of sorts that you entered in through, and then many of the buildings were numbered.



Here are some of the number buildings. I'll have to do research at a later date, at the moment I'm swamped with things to do.



Here is the Zeiss-Grossplanetarium.



It was starting to get dark and I think I decided to head home at this point. Unfortunately when you don't know where you are, don't speak the language well, and it's getting dark, it makes it all the more difficult to find your way. I most likely made it home between 10:30 and midnight, like I did the whole time I was in Berlin. I seemed to get lost there a lot..it's such a spread out city.

That's all for now! I explored more of Berlin on my second full day.

Stroudwater Trail & Calvary Cemetery in Winter

Went with a friend to Stroudwater Trail in Portland, ME. After the hike we decided to stop by Calvary Cemetery as well, though didn't stay too long. It was VERY cold out. Hard to take pictures when your hands are cold and all you want to do is take a picture quickly so you can put your hands back in your pockets. I'll be buying some linings and mittens that will hopefully work well for future cold weather expeditions.

Vacation to California - Bay Area

I haven't had time to update since my vacation over Labor Day weekend. These pictures were taken over a series of days on my vacation to San Jose, and the Bay Area in California.

These pictures were taken on the first day of my trip, which was August 31st. I decided to check out the neighborhood where I once lived in San Jose and I took a few pictures of my old apartment and other neighborhood memories. These are just a few shots of the area that I really liked.



These pictures were taken September 1st at Santa Clara Mission Cemetery.



These were taken September 3rd in multiple places. We drove down to Santa Cruz, and finding it was way too busy, we decided to just continue our drive up highway 1 toward Half Moon Bay. We stopped at a really nice beach along the way. I was hoping it was one I had once visited that had a nice view to the ocean through a sort of cave. It wasn't that beach, but this beach had another smaller cave which you could see the beach through. The first four pictures are along Highway 1 just north of Santa Cruz. The other two were later that night in Colma at the Woodlawn Cemetery (the final resting place of Emperor Norton).



This last picture was taken on the last full day in California during my vacation. We went into downtown San Jose for food, and found that Tapestry in Talent was going on. We checked out the booths and got some food there, nothing else was open since it was Labor Day. This was taken of a fountain in town that I thought looked nice.

The week in photo's - Monday

Last week, since the weather looked promising, I decided to take pictures every day of the week. I also decided to go to places I had never been before. It was a little difficult to find places I hadn't already been, but I had a few places I'd been meaning to check out for awhile, so it worked out nicely. Here is the photo log of last week.

On Monday, August 21st, I went to Western Cemetery on the West End of Portland, ME. It was a nice little cemetery, but compared to some of the other area cemetery's, it wasn't too impressive.

The week in photo's - Friday

Friday, August 25th, I went to Scarborough Beach & Black Point Cemetery in Scarborough, ME. Again, not sure if it's the time of year (seems odd, it being the summer still), but there weren't many people there at all. It could've been the time of day as well since it was after I was done working and must've been some time after 6pm. The cemetery wasn't anything to get excited about, but then again, it's a cemetery. Who gets excited about cemetery's? Ok..I admit it, I enjoy them for some odd reason. Not sure if I get excited per se, but, well there you are.