Day 5
  
Well a rest day has been coming for a few days. Since I stepped off the plane from Melbourne with a couple of hours sleep, we haven’t really stopped. With our intensive schedule of doing as much as we can, rest really isn’t ever part of what we do.

Today it was. We laid in late and waited for Claire’s friend to arrive and join us for the last few days in Berlin. She arrived shortly after 11 (from the UK) and we started a nice easy day of drinking and eating in pavement restaurants, today Vietnamese made a come back to the menu. However my peanut beef tasted suspiciously like beef penang, some reckon this Vietnamese restaurant dabbled in a bit of Thai food as well. Saying all that, the meal was delicious and I had no complains there at all.

From there a leisurely wander down the river, the Spree and then another stop for a couple more drinks (and a couple of new beers) by the river. We actually stumbled on a bar that was recommended to me, the broker bar, which has the price of drink fluctuate with supply and demand. Quite novel eh? But not exactly new, when I first moved to Melbourne many years ago there was a similar bar called something like the Stock Exchange with exactly the same concept.

A short stop at our now local supermarket meant us buying a few snacks for tea. Most of the products are quite easy to distinguish from the pictures on the labels. One proved a bit more tricky, looking like a weird variety of cat food but reassuringly turning out to be a pork pate. 

And so onto our evening. A night at the B flat jazz club. We’ve enjoyed live music in recent history and have been to a few jazz clubs in Melbourne. So we thought why not try one in Berlin. The night was a big band night and had a 15 piece orchestra. The place was hot with no air conditioning but it seemed to enhance the atmosphere, the sound was loud and the club was tiny. You could literally touch the performers. It was nice to see so many talented musicians and one guy with a headband on who was really getting into it, moving with the beat, smiling and clapping all his fellow performers and on his solos moving around more than Kenny G. The service was good and attentive (something I find lacking in many places here). We wandered home through this historic city past many significant sights. The warmth providing us comfort from a normally inclement weather in our homes.

IJS