“Obama Ist Best! Very Good OK!”

Pretty much every person we’ve met here immediately wants to talk about Sarah Palin thanks to my Obama cap, which only a hour finally elicted the above quote from a shopper at Checkpoint Charlie. The consensus on Palin is completely horrible, of course. One very tall Finn told me last night that she’s become a national joke for his countrymen. Oh, us too, honey!

Our apartment here in Berlin is near Viktoria-Louise Platz, about a ten-minute walk from the heart of the Schoeneberg gayborhood. Last night we barhopped for a few hours, hitting Prinzknecht, Mutschmanns, and Scheune. Berlin is packed with tourists for Folsom Europe of course, so we’ve met more Brits and Italians than locals, so far. Tons of NY’ers here too.This morning six of us hit Ka-De-We, the ginmorous fancy department store near Kurfurstendamm, where we had a fancy brunch in their sprawling “food court” which must have two dozen themed cafes. Then we took a fantastic three hour bus tour which was put together by Folsom Europe organizers. It was quite amusing to watch the reactions of our fellow tourists when a hundred leathermen poured out of the bus at every stop. The tour was filmed by a local documentarian and somehow Chris, Aaron, Little Tom and I got into about every scene, maybe because we were American, maybe because we were the only ones not in leather. More photos later, hopefully. Our apartment doesn’t have wireless and I’m finding it a chore to lug the laptop around. Hey look, gas is like, $9 a gallon!