Saturday and Sunday was built around the Berlin Marathon. Saturday we decided to take a day off from running and had a leisurely breakfast. The standard these days is a piece of toast with honey or goat cheese and cucumbers, tomatoes, salami, coffee, and juice.
We did some Skyping with family and hit the road around 1pm. We went to the Berlin Marathon Expo, which was held in the south of the city. It is standard for big races to have an expo the few days before the race to allow the runners to pick up their race numbers and check out the latest in gear. It was extremely busy but cool to see all of the running clothes and gear. For some reason, Birkenstock had a booth setup and were selling their sandals at a really good price, so Jack picked up a pair…I already have some. Interesting note: Beer is consumed everywhere here. It is common to see little old lady’s drinking beer at a small café and for a couple to be walking down the street carrying beer in glass bottles. So of course, beer was present at the Expo. But, it is not a great idea for the runners to drink a lot of alcohol before race day so most of the beer was alcohol free (alkoholfrei).
We went from the Expo to one of the biggest department stores in Europe, KaDeWe (which is an abbreviation for something in German…I don’t remember). It is huge. We mainly stayed on the 6th floor ,which is chock-full of gourmet foods from around the world. They even had a little Canada section with maple syrup and Moosehead beer.
After, we walked to the nearby Tiergarten, the “Central Park” of Berlin, which houses the Victory Column. The column was built in 1864 to celebrate the Prussian defeat of Denmark, then re-used to celebrate the Prussian defeat of France in 1870.
When we walked further down the road to the finish line and the Brandenburg Gate we stumbled upon the inline skating marathon that apparently happens the day before the running marathon. Who knew?
We were pretty exhausted by this point so we decided to head back to the apartment. On the way, though, we tried out Berlin’s famous dish, Currywurst (a sausage coated in curry powder and topped with ketchup). While not healthy it was pretty yummy.
On Sunday we woke up early (at least compared to most days on this trip) and headed to one of the prettier city squares to catch the marathon. The spot was between kilometer 40 and 41, so it was quite close to the finish line (a full marathon is 42 km). Surprisingly, no one else was really around, save some older ladies who were volunteers and setting up. So, we took some pictures to pass the time.
Finally, the first of the racers started to pass by. The wheelchair race takes off slightly before the runners.
Then, we got to see Patrick Makau run by, who ended up winning the Berlin Marathon and setting a new world record of 2:03:38. He was quite far ahead of the competition by this point in the race.
We also got to see Paula Radcliffe, a British runner who came 3rd in the women’s category.
Obviously, it was a great opportunity to take a lot of cool pictures and also to be motivated by all of the runners. We have already decided that we will run a marathon at some point in the near future (starting with the half-marathon in December). While inspiring, we did witness a lot of pain as detailed in the pictures (e.g., grimacing, crying, walking, cramping, puking, bleeding from the nipples…).
A couple of “artistic” shots for the hell of it.
After the race we went back to our neighborhood and grabbed some much needed food. The Vietnamese was delicious and made us think of Jack's Mom (Lynda), who loves Vietnamese food.
The day was capped off with a 5-mile (8km) run, which went more smoothly than our last attempt at this distance (a race in Boston at the end of July with temperatures of 40C). On Tuesday, we will begin a training program that should gradually guide us to 13.1 miles (21km).
We then had a late dinner, packed the apartment, and got ready to depart to Dresden on Monday morning. More from Dresden coming soon.
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