Grüne Woche... Around the world in 3 hours

So there was the huge cultural event going on in Berlin the last week of January (so right about now). It is called Grüne Woche (Green Week). I am not sure of the name, it did not seem to have any huge environmental message that I saw, of course I opted out of pretty much everything but the culture booths from around the world (although mostly just Europe peppered with some Middle East and Asia). I went with my friend Tara from Canada who was visiting me for a week. Good times were had by all.

We Started the day off by heading to Austria (Östereich, all the country Names in the pictures are in German so unless it is obscenely obvious such as Italien, I'll clear it up with something in brackets... this is a really long explantion, maybe it should just have been a sentence and not inside a bracket, oh well live and learn).

food

Music!

So the woman in the picture below is pretty unimpressed at the fact that I am taking pictures. But I have to say if you where traditional cloths, you need to be prepared for it so suck it up Sally. If I dressed myself up as a courier de bois and went to a culture festival I would expect that one or too pictures would be taken.

Not happy

So Below is another somewhat "Surprise, you're in a picture" moment. I liked this little windmill thing, but didn't notice Tara in the frame but it worked out.

Good by Austria, *tear*

After Austria we magnificently made it to the Ukraine. Tara was particularly excited because her Grandmother comes from there (FUN FACTS!).

Tara showing her grandmother that she is getting some Ukrainian Culture

Hey look I actually was there!

This woman below had a lot of great pottery. It was all hand etched with really interesting designs. I really don't need to say it but she was in fact too legit to quit.

"Oh don't mind me, I'm just being awesome"

At a lot of the country areas they had stages where traditional music or performances were happening. Ukraine was no exception. Just imagine what the man below should sound like based on how he is dressed and you would be correct... well if you guessed that he sounded like awesome.

"Almost as awesome as me"

We bid farewell to the Ukraine and moved on to... Switzerland (die Schweiz)? yeah it makes sense. But it was a little hard to figure out it was Switzerland, they only hung up a bunch of army knife symbols. What's up with that.

Of Course upon entering Switzerland we immediately run into a band with duel accordions. It is actually ridiculous how many good accordion players there are in Berlin. It's like when we learnt eh recorder or ukulele, they teach there small children the accordion, and make them stick with it. 

Cheese, in Switzerland? Need a bit more authenticity 

So there was this weird game where as a team you had to move the platform to make a ball go onto the correct track and fall into a hole. Tara and I totally schooled a young family at this and won some small pieces of chocolate, take that young families.

Schoolin' all y'all

So the picture below is super blurry, but I really wanted to keep it. I was trying for a couple of minutes to get a picture of these guys, but people kept on being people and got in my way. I finally got a chance and one of the guys noticed and gave me this little pose, while all of his friends remained oblivious.  I also enjoy the random woman in the right corner. She seems really happy about something.

Okay, time to speed through a bit... Then there was Italy (Italien) 

aaand Romania

The Romanian dancers below were also singing. It was pretty fund to watch. It wasa  bit of a call and response between the men and women it went somethgin like this.

Men: "dun dun DUN DUN dun dun DUN DUN

Women: "Yo YoYo Yo"

You can make up your own tune for that to go to. 

Irish coffee, now we're talking. I actually didn't get the irish coffee, but I had and Arabic coffee, it is very strong and spiced. If you ever find a place to try it I would recommend it

I completely forget which country these two are supposed to be from (something Scandinavian?) but their hats are fantastic so they got tossed into the blog.

Canada? YES! The guy running this booth was from Alberta so it was very western Canada, but I they had moosehead and "Feuerwasser" (fire water). I had my first canned beer since I moved here, and it was adequate. Oddly enough there was no USA booth.

So I saw this woman and though "That hat is amazing" as it is. so I kept on trying to take a picture of her, but once again people were being people and it took me a while. I was actually stalking here for 5 minutes because the area was filled with a lot of smaller booths and little corridors. I felt pretty creepy, but results make up for that.

Somehow we came across an agriculture room filled with livestock, enjoy.

round one.. FIGHT!

He looks small, but this guy was huge

One fun story about the livestock area is that they had a lot of meat vendors (makes sense) and in the area with all the horses there was one vendor with a torso on a rotisserie. I convinced Tara that this was horse and it was perfectly normal (some places it is). She got pretty upset by this, I had a lot of fun with it . The thing is that there was a sign right by it that said "Wildschwein" or wild pig.  Good times. So if you ever read this Tara you rest easy knowing that the torso we saw wasn't horse. 

Check it out it's the radio tower.... that is all

This was from much later that night, we were walking to a train and saw this Hotel. I who knew the Eagles liked Berlin so much.

That's about it for now. I am actually working now so I have things to do and whatnot. I work at "The Bird". It's a steak and Burger place. It has really good meat and doesn't serve much else. I wouldn't recommend going there if you are vegetarian though, unless you like caesar salad a whole lot.