Gatzaenkers!

I pulled a muscle in my neck stretching this morning. What is the point of stretching before you run so you don't hurt yourself but then hurt yourself trying to avoid it? If you can imagine somebody running very erect and acknowledging other runners with what could be misconstrued as a bow then you have some idea of what it was like for those who were in the park today. On the other hand the Gatzaenkers arrived from Sweden today! Huzzah! We met at the former DDR television tower at Alexanderplatz and had a picnic of brot, kase und fleisch as well as bier und schokolade. For those of you who don't know this East Berlin landmark, my understanding is that the communists were annoyed at how much development was occurring in West Berlin that they built this quite extravagant needle-like tower as a way of keeping the East Germans hip to the communist scene, as well as giving a nose thumbing to the west.



Charlie and I were also fortunate enough to hang out with Marx und Engels.



After that illustrious meeting we started on to our respective s-bahn stations. During this we passed a movie shoot, a photo shoot with a half naked (or half clothed) model in front of a fountain and a very beautiful sunset. Nice way to end the day. Time for ibruprofen, guten nacht!