The rain continued on day three in Berlin. Roman and Anca were kind enough to invite us to a brunch with some of their friends, most of whom were expats. Joe and I picked up some provisions and we met Roman and Anca for a subway ride south. As Anca pointed out, a lot of the people on the train were just coming home from going out. The club culture is intense in Berlin, and Sunday afternoon of all times is often when people will be coming home or just going out. It’s around the clock on weekends.
The brunch was in a really beautiful apartment. High ceilings, plants, even a sauna (of all things), in the living room. Space in apartments seems generally abundant in Berlin. It’s one of the few major cities in the world where population has declined since the end of WWII.
After a few hours of brunching, Roman and Anca headed off for a day trip and we gave them our many thanks for their hospitality. I don’t know many people who would spend so much of their weekend touring around two people they don’t know, but we were very grateful that they did, and gained two friends as a result. Getting to talk with locals or expats was something definitely missing from the previous cities we went to. It can be hard to meet regular people when visiting foreign cities, so getting to talk with locals was a huge upside of our time in Berlin.
We stopped by a street festival on the way back to our apartment, and took it pretty easy when the rain really started coming down. By evening it had cleared up and we feasted on some cheap Italian food before doing a lap of the neighborhood to walk it off.
