Berlin Day 4 : Leftovers

I'd told the gang last night about the restaurant booking for the "Gala Dinner". That was okay as far as it went, but they asked for more details about the actual address and directions for finding the place, so Carl and I went back to do some further research. Going there provided an excellent opportunity for yet more exploration in and around our local neighbourhood. The more we saw of this part of the city, the more we liked it. It's full of really pleasant areas, all very quiet and with virtually every street lined with fine mature trees. A nice place to live. It was on one of these streets that I spotted this pair of old cars parked end to end. Perhaps they're left over from the time of the Wall and the divided city and the days of Checkpoint Charlie and the US Zone and all the rest of that period of German and Berlin history. Whatever their background, they sure looked fine.

Tonight's opera, this time in the Komische Oper, was Der Rosenkavalier, which is quite long and was scheduled to start at 6.00 pm. We'd arranged to meet at 4.30 in the same place we'd gone to after last night's opera, and I was determined not to get lost and not to be late this time, so once again I didn't manage to fit in the intended afternoon nap. Going where we did for food turned out to be an excellent choice. Despite being on Unter den Linden Ione of Berlin's most exclusive addresses), prices were remarkably reasonable, and the food was really, really good. Good food was then followed with a great music experience: an excellent production with some wonderful singing and an outstanding performance by Stella Doufexis as Octavian. We were all in agreement about tonight: total excellence.

We went back to the same place afterwards for wind-down, comparison of notes and so on, and then two of us went on across the city to join those who'd been uninvolved musically. They were in fine form when we got there, so it was a bit of a bumpy ride to finish the night. Another wonderful, if rather tiring, day.