Dear New Berlin walking tours

Composed April 11
Post Dated April 5

Dear all of you who are reading …
Dear both of you who are reading our Jenn / Rob “New Trip to the Old World” blog!

Clearly most of these “letters” are jokes, just to give some structure to the journal. Since this one is a fan note, I’ll actually be sending it to the Sandeman’s New Europe Tours people:
http://www.newberlintours.com/nbt/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/lang,en/

Dear New Berlin Walking Tours:

Last week we followed several suggestions and joined the New Berlin free tour. We’re not typically fans of guided tours, generally preferring to guide ourselves with books, information, and our guts, all of which generally serve us well. We figured that if the tour sucked, we could simply peel off at any time, and if we stuck to it but were uninspired, we could respond to the final request for tips with a polite few euro.

Our guide Per was simply great. His enthusiasm for Berlin itself shows quite clearly throughout the tour, and his informative, entertaining narrative gave context and life to the disparate tidbits of information tied together by the four-hour walk. Even the facts and information we were already aware of were given a new point of view by his wonderfully subjective lessons.

Per was a great listener as well. He quickly realized that I share his opinion about “Run Lola Run” being one of the greatest movies ever made, and he went out of his way to point out various locations where the film was shot.

Perhaps it’s just because they’re both English, but Per’s delivery, timing, and inflection reminded both of us of Eddie Izzard. He did indeed conduct the entire tour in men’s clothing, at least as far as we could tell.

The only bummer of the tour was that the afternoon break took place at a nice, comfortable, American chain Schlotsky's. We would have loved to be pointed towards a good shack for a sausage and a beer.

Instead of shelling out a few polite euros, we ended up digging through our pockets and handing over all of the cash we had on us. Unfortunately for Per this amounted to only twenty euro and some change. At ten euro each, it was well worth it.

We’ll be recommending “New Europe Tours” to our friends, as I’m doing now by posting this note in our blog:
http://jennrobeurope08.blogspot.com/

We’ll also be looking for subsequent “New Europe” tours later on our trip. We’ll be in Paris and London over the next couple of weeks, and we easily would have taken a New Vienna tour.

All the best,
Rob & Jenn