Berlin livin

Good morning America! How is everyone back home? I feel like all I do on here is talk about me, and the cool places we have been. So lets talk about you!
What have you been up to?
What’s new in your life?
Are you going anywhere cool for Christmas?
Any really interesting new year’s resolutions?
Or you could just email me and tell me how your life just hasn’t been the same since Erin and I left..
So feel free to email me at kayakclimb247@yahoo.com

Alright enough about you, it’s time to talk about what we have been up to.

We got our first snow in Berlin!!!

Incase you hadn’t noticed Erin and I have been doing our best to not be in Berlin much, and until last week we where pretty successful at that goal. I think I was only in Berlin 4 days the entire month of October. Well that has changed; like the gray cloud that has moved into Berlin we to have been hanging around a lot.
There is so much to see and do in this town that not leaving it just gives us a chance to explore the city we live in and the cool things it has to offer.
Last weekend we road to the huge forest that is close to our apartment in Zehlendorf. This forest is called the Gruenavald and contains the only hill in Berlin. For those of you that aren’t in the know, Berlin is the flattest place I have ever lived and the fact that there is a hill is odd because the geology of the area is all sand. So you may be wondering how did this hill get to Berlin? Well my friends that’s a great question that I can answer for you. Much of Germany has been shaped by the two world wars that it hosted; this fact holds true for the geography of Berlin. Berlin was the most heavily bombed area in the European front. Those bombs blew up 90% of the city leaving Berlin in ruins. The allies decided to take all of these ruins and pile them up in the South Western part of the city. This is how berlins only hill came to be, it’s literally made out of the buildings of old Berlin.
Now Berliners are smart people they said “hey we have a hill” what should we do with it? So in 1969 they got a bunch of concrete and poured mans first artificial climbing wall (they where very ahead of the times). Other parts of the hills provide a place to fly kites, mountain bike, fly remote controlled airplanes, and on top of the tallest one is an old CIA radar station.

They ended up pouring about 10 of these concrete structures all over the city. Not knowing my way around the city and being a climber I decided the only way to learn the city was to visit these structures. I have been to most of them and I have to say that they are really cool, some are old bunkers that in WW2 housed 10’s of thousands of people and other are just poured concrete that was poured for the sole purpose of climbing.

Thanks for reading the blogg; I need to get back to school work and planning some trips. Ruff life really..
Hope you are all doing well
Patric