Wet Fish

Today it rained, and we were expecting it so we didn't plan any outdoor activities. We don't rush to anything and typically leave the house around noon. We took the subway and train to the Berlin Aquarium, which is in the zoo. I tried to buy tickets at three or four windows but they kept directing me around to the other side of the zoo, a 10-minute walk in light rain. I asked the first ticket clerk, "Zwei studenten fur zie Aquarium?" and as he rolled his eyes at my broken German he answered me, "Only the aquarium? Not here: go back to the corner, then left and 10-minutes walk."

The aquarium is 3 stories high - divided into fish, reptiles, amphibians and insects. Leia liked the pretty jellyfish near the entrance. Apparently because jellies are so brainless it is difficult to create an environment they can survive in an aquarium. There were at least four types of jellies, each in their own tank, else the stronger kind would poison the weaker ones. There were many other kinds of fishes of all sizes, in mixed tanks or varied habitats arranged by where they are found in the world, and we tried to take photographs of some of them through the glass. You can find a selection here.

On the reptiles floor were many pretty tortoises, lizards, and snakes. One tortoise was athletically strolling around his enclosure while three others basked in a UV lamp. Some of the small lizards had climbed up their walls to the top of their enclosures, ignoring the plants put inside for them, and were looking forlornly out the gratings to freedom. Some of the bigger lizards appeared to be trying to dig their way under the glass. Most were content to sit around or hide under rocks. There were a couple of chameleons, not in camouflage. They have to point both their eyes at the target insect to hit it accurately with their long tongues. We saw many turtles, and a few crocodiles.

We enjoyed searching for the amphibians, and Leia particularly liked the toads, perhaps due to their fashion sense. The colorful and tiny poison arrow frogs were especially elusive and liked to hide behind leaves, so it took a lot of patience and attentiveness to spot them, and even then it wasn't always easy to get a good photograph.

That same floor had many insects, some of them "gross." Wooden benches shaped like logs had little windows with scorpions or tarantulas inside them, so you could sit on one. There were a few spiders, many camouflaged mantises, and a large colony of ants, who could roam between connected enclosures through plastic tunnels overhead. I read that those ants can form colonies of hundreds of thousands of ants over a wide area, with multiple queens. There were two kinds of butterflies with room to flutter around in a large enclosure.

We'd planned to go to a Turkish hammam to relax today, but it was clear when we left the aquarium at 1700 that we were not going to make it. Across the street from the aquarium are many shoe stores, and we needed to stop to buy some. Leia bought nice flip-flops to replace ones she had that broke. I rejected a few shoe stores as too "trendy" but Leia took me to one like "Gali" where I found a pair of decent flip-flops on sale as soon as I walked in the door. It took me the better part of an hour to find new sneakers, while Leia waited patiently.

On the way back I stopped at the little mall in the Alexanderplatz U-bahn station for a small boba tea with lots of mango popping bobas. There were a pile of them left over in the cup after we drank the tea, and since they are basically all sugar, Leia said if I eat too many of them I will be Boba Fett ("fett" is German for "fat.")

From the first few minutes in the aquarium I already had a craving for sushi, so we dropped the shoes off at home and continued to a sushi restaurant on our street. It's a tiny hole in the wall with only four tables, but wonderful sushi at a fair price. Leia had a nice varied combination and I assembled my own with sashimi and two rolls. The sushi cooks double as wait staff, and I gave them a 10% tip though I understand that is not so common here.