Buona Sera!! Checking in from Genova, Italy, where it is HOT. Just a bit sweaty all of the time, ideally with a few cold showers thrown in a day. Since the last time I wrote Kara and I have 1. Left Berlin via train 2. Arrived in Paris to stay for 4 nights 3. Took an overnight bus to Milan 4. took an intercity train to Genova 5. Rode all around the city of Genova with our backpacks on figuring out the train system.

Kara and I spent our last two nights in Berlin staying with a friend of hers, Craig, a 29 year old New Yorker who just moved to Berlin. He was super nice and went with us to treptower park, where we walked around and explored some more huge soviet monuments and sat by the lake enjoying patchy sunlight.

We went to Tacheles, an urban artmovemnt?building takeover/cool art studios that are controversial because they attract about 500,000 visitors a year but the city wants to kick them out and re do the building so they have shut off electricity and water and sent in private security forces to close the building but were forced to reopen due to public protest. That night we went out! To a club called E4 near Alexanderplatz and we stayed out until 530 am, the metro ride home all I could hear in my head was the '5 oclock in the morning song'...very fun going with Kara's language studies friends. Next day, to the train station!

We arrived in Paris at about 930pm and followed directions to my friend Kyra's apparment. She lives in the historical/jewish/gay section of town, a very cool combination. Their building is super old, on the 5ht floor with a wooden winding straircase that is all worn down in the middle from ages of people stepping on it. Their place was tiny but very picturesque, with exposed wooden frames and hardwood floors, and from the window you could see the Church of Sacre Coure, sacred heart. In Paris we walked and walked and walked and walked, saw the Eifel Tower, the Lourve, walked along the Seine, had a romantic dinner with Vin rouge, fromage, baguette et salami along the canal. We saw the Moulin Rouge, the Lafayette gallery with it's free and gorgeous view of the city, the Hotel deville, the arc of triumph. Paris is great because you hardly have to try to find something beautiful and cool, because there is something everywhere you go, so it is easy to just wander. A fun city, but very hot and very full of people and very expensive! So far it has been nice to get to Italy so it is easier to communicate. It makes life so much easier...