Fun and Games at Deutsche Post

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  Berlin, Germany
Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Today's first objective was to head back to KaDaWe and buy a pressure cooker. For those who know Belle well this will not come as to much of a surprise. When we were in the kitchenware section yesterday Belle had spotted 'Fissler' brand pressure cookers and was very excited by the price - 50% less than she had seen them on sale for in Australia. Belle had asked the longsuffering sales lady in the Fissler department how much the pressure cooker she wanted weighed so that we could check up on postage costs back to Melbourne. While I was updating the blog last night we also checked with Deutsche Post, which turns out to be DHL when it comes to packages, how much it would cost to ship up to 5kg and up to 10kg. Given the costs, the cost of postage plus the purchase price of the pressure cooker would still be less than the best price Belle could find in Melbourne so we were heading back to KaDaWe this morning. We both had our backpacks with us full of other things that we were planning to take the opportunity to ship along with the pressure cooker

Haus Julia

. We got the pressure cooker and got back out of KaDaWe without doing further damage to the credit card. We then headed for the post office, purchased the biggest shipping box that they had, about 40x30x20cm. We spent a good 5 minutes trying to work out how to assemble the box, finally giving up and getting some assistance from the postal employee who did not do a much better job than we had been - he tore one of the tabs off that was supposed to help with closing the box. We loaded it up with the pressure cooker, Belle's boots, and most of the souvenirs we had got in Russia, bought some extra tape and sealed up the box. We then took it to the counter to get it weighed hoping that we had not gone over 10 kilograms. Turns out the box weighed 10 kg and 45g. This was obviously permissible as we were only charged the 10kg shipping fee, much to our relief. It will be interesting to see who beats who home, us or the package, Belle's mom posted some stuff back from Europe last year and it arrived in Melbourne in about 10 to 14 days.

With our backpacks considerably lighter we headed off to the local McDonalds for some WiFi access and a snack. After that we found an open air market selling fresh produce and a few other odds and sods. I tried some Gluhwein (mulled wine) which was very fragrant and warming on a cold day. After wandering the market for a while we then headed to the Museum of Musical Instruments which is adjacent to the Philharmonie. They have a great collection of some of the earliest instruments from which our modern 'classical' instruments have arisen. While we were wandering the museum there was a small group of Germans who had payed extra for a tour of the museum with a guide. We were able to take advantage of this as their guide played a number of the instruments including a grinding organ, the sort of thing an you see in the movies with an organ grinder operating the organ and a trained monkey collecting donations from the audience

Early Flutes

. The guide also fired up the large pipe organ, played one of the many harpsichords, demonstrated a flute, clarinet, french horn and oboe, and finally showed off the magnificent Wurlitzer organ they have. The Wurlitzer is essentially a pipe organ on steroids. It has a large array of pipes, as well as a xylophone, vibraphone, marimba, tympani, cymbals, whistles, bells, and many others to boot. The pipes and other instruments are enclosed in a room that is probably at least 20 metres long and 10 metres deep. We thoroughly enjoyed our time, me especially as I got to follow the development of the flute through the various examples of the earliest wooden flutes, through to the modern concert flute of today.

Tomorrow we have to be up and doing by 3:00am so we were taking it fairly easy today. After the museum we headed to Postdamer Platz where the Berlin International Film Festival is happening. We checked out the festival souvenir shop and got one of the festival bags which we had seem around town and much admired. The festival souvenir stand happened to be in a large shopping mall so we spent the next little while wandering the shops. We came across an Eddie Bauer store which was having a sale and Belle was able to pick up a few bargains - 3 tops for 10 Euro each. We stopped in the food court for an early dinner and had a salad with prawns and little mozzarella balls. It was great to have a big, fresh salad as an alternative to the many wurst of the last few days

Later Flutes similar to modern flutes (front)

. After dinner we stopped in a Dunkin' Donuts for about half an hour to access the internet via a couple of their computers - Belle has been suffering eBay withdrawal and also wanted to check her Facebook profile to see if any of you have be sending her any messages. I finally got around to fixing the error in about the third edition of the blog that Ange had mentioned. One thing to note if you ever happen to be using a German keyboard, they have interchanged the position of the Y and Z keys and have also made it very difficult to produce an @ sign, I cannot remember what key they have assigned it to but I just know it took some time to work out what key combination would result in @ appearing.

Once Belle had had her fill of Facebook we headed back onto the U-Bahn for the trip back to our hostel where we packed our bags and are planning on an early nights sleep before the rude awakening at they very uncivilised hour of 3:00am. Talk to you next from Rome!

PS: for those of you who enjoy a bit of undergraduate humour, some of the streets signs in Germany have been a constant source of hilarity, a small sample is provided for your enjoyment!

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Us at the Musical instruments Museum

The Philharmonie

Street signs in Berlin

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