"Berlin. Berlin is. Berlin is Berlin. " a Berlin Travel Page by Trillian2005

That's what the Berliners (and not only the Berliner donuts, a.k.a. "Berliner Pfannkuchen") were wondering when I arrived at Berlin-Schönefeld airport on a sunny Sunday morning in October. And where in the world is Gabi Johnson? In Berlin? Bingo!

Berlin used to be the capital of all of Germany, then, for a while, half of Berlin was the capital of half of Germany, and, after the reunification of Germany in 1989, it is again a whole capital of all of Germany. It is also a large international city, a microcosmos with residents and tourists from every imaginable country of the world. A few of them might even be from outer space while hitchhiking through the galaxy.

Well, we have already established that she in Berlin. As we can see, she definitely feels at home in Berlin, since she's smiling like a Berliner Pfannkuchen (the famous sugar-coated Berlin donut filled with jam, also known as sufgania in Israel).

In this picture Sufgania is wearing a truly handmade colorful Tibetan cap with braids that she bought (actually I did, I'm getting tired of referring to myself in the third person singular as I'm not used to it) at a Berlin open-air market, together with equally colorful, hand-knitted Tibetan socks (socks not shown in this picture).

Back to Berlin - where we still are, by the way.
I always thought that the city's name Berlin is middle high German for Bärlein (little bear). Since a bear is present in the Berlin coat of arms, it all made sense to me. Until the day when my old linguistics professor cordially informed me that Berlin is old Polabian (a language that may have been briefly mentioned by Italo Calvino in his novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveler) and means "swamp". Since Berlin is surrounded by almost as many lakes as can be found in Finland, the city's name may indeed have a logical origin somewhere in the swamplands.

Berlin's climate is temperate-mesothermal, which is not always the case for the political climate. In any case, it explains a lot.

We already know where in the world he is. And who is he? He's the guy who sells the colorful, handmande Tibetan caps and socks. He also sells colorful, handmade Tibetan scarves and gloves. I didn't buy them since I ran out of money. Not because Berlin is so expensive, actually it is not at all compared to other large capital cities on an international scale. In fact, it is even a lot cheaper than Karlsruhe. The reason why I had run out of money is that I had visited Tel Aviv prior to my arrival in Berlin. Tel Aviv is definitely more expensive than Berlin, it is even more expensive than itself a few months ago. The Tibetan flower power guy was very friendly, he told me all about Tibet that he visits on a regular basis to buy the colorful, handmade caps, socks, gloves, and scarves. And he gave me a discount.

Berlin is famous for its architecture, art, culture, history, jelly donuts (a.k.a. Berliner Pfannkuchen), The Wall (thank you, Pink Floyd!) and more. In fact, there really isn't anything that Berlin is not famous for. That's why it is impossible to mention everything here, so I decided to write about some of its most famous highlights.