The Brocks

Hello to all of you followers of kelandrewbrock (the few and the faithful)! This is our final overseas post. Our travels have been wonderful but exhausting, and now we're ready for a vacation from our vacation!! ;)

So our last stop was Berlin. Andrew and I arrived Thursday evening after a long drive from Warsaw. Apparently, Poland has no motorways, so the drive was especially difficult along two-lane highways with lots of lorries driving slower than we would have liked. We went to bed relatively early so that we could get up early the next morning and do an all-day walking tour that our friend Sharon recommended. The walking tour we took was the Best of Berlin tour on Friday morning, and I definitely recommend it to anyone going to Berlin. The guide (whose name slips my mind, unfortunately) was very thorough and well versed in Berlin's past and present. The website says the tour last "6+ hours", but I think he was going to go well past seven hours, which sounds really long, but you can skip out early if you wish though you probably won't want to because it's so interesting. Just make sure to wear comfortable shoes!

Anyway, so Andrew and I did that all day on my birthday and then rushed back to our hotel to meet the Frasers, who were flying all the way from London to celebrate my birthday with us and see us off to Atlanta! Andrew had made us reservations at a really nice restaurant on top of the Reichstag building, which houses Germany's parliament. The food was great; we ordered German champagne that was surprising good! Andrew arranged for cake with a candle, and he and the Frasers sang "Happy birthday" to me! Then the hostess at the restaurant brought me a present from the restaurant! It was a coffee cup and saucer with the Reichstag building on it! The Reichstag building is a really beautiful building, and the views from the roof (where the restaurant is located) are amazing. Here's a little video of it (sorry it's so dark and goofy, but we were having a good time after dinner).

After dinner we went to this bar that we'd walked past on our tour earlier that day. It was called Clärchens Ballhaus. We were the only tourists there; I'm sure. Hardly anyone we tried to talk to spoke any English, though we shared a table with a nice German couple and talked to them for ages with me translating everything in my very broken and limited German! Then someone gets the wild idea to tell the band that it's "meine dreizig Geburtstag" (my 30th birthday), and the announce it and call me over. Here's what happened next...

In case you can't understand the lyrics (I barely could, and I was reading them off the page!) or (like me) have never heard this song in your LIFE, here they are:

SAN FRANCISCO NIGHTS
(Burdon / Briggs / Weider / Jenkins / McCulloch)
Eric Burdon & The Animals - 1967

[This is the part that the band leader reads out loud at the beginning, when I clearly am clueless as to what's going on.]
This following program is dedicated to the city and people of
San Francisco, who may not know it but they are beautiful and so
is their city this is a very personal song, so if the viewer
cannot understand it particularly those of you who are European
residents save up all your brand and fly trans love airways to
San Francisco U.S.A., then maybe you'll understand the song, it
will be worth it, if not for the sake of this song but for the
sake of your own peace of mind.

Strobe lights beam create dreams
walls move minds to do
on a warm San Francisco night
old child young child feel alright
on a warm San Francisco night
angels sing leather wings
jeans of blue Harley Davisons too
on a warm San Francisco night
old angels young angels feel alright
on a warm San Francisco night.

I wasn't born there perhaps I'll die there
there's no place left to go, San Francisco.

[And this is the part where the band leader makes me take it over on my own for a bit!! Yikes!]
Cop's face is filled with hate
heavens above he's on a street called love
when will they even learn
old cop young cop feel alright
on a warm San Francisco night
the children are cool
they don't raise fools
it's an american dream
includes indians too.

Wow. That was some night! Thank you Andrew and the Frasers and the staff at the Reichstag building restaurant and the German couple and the band at Clärchens Ballhaus for making my 30th birthday one that I will NEVER forget!

Love to all,
Kelly