Red Jared and the Search for the NFL Draft (April 26th)

This was to be an exciting day for Scott and I. Not for anything Berlin, German, or even European.

No no, today was the of the 2008 NFL Draft. Our whole day was planned around watching it. The real question was: Where on earth, or should I say Berlin, are we going find it?

Today was warmer than it was yesterday, though it felt as if there was a 400 degree change intemperature between shade and sunlight.

We set off north and walked through Checkpoint Charlie, then found our way to Potsdam Platz.

Earlier that morning Scott had asked the guy who worked at the hostel, Alexander (who I called Zander), where we could possibly find NFL football. Puzzled, he said that the best place to find it would be at an American themed restaurant in Potsdam Platz called Play Offs.

This seemed simple enough...until we saw Potsdam Platz. It was HUGE! It was about 4 city blocks and there was no way to navigate through it. A nice tour guide helped us out and we eventually found it, but there was no time to linger because we were going on a tour at 1 o'clock.

The tour was of "Red" Berlin, what it was like there in post-WWII Communist controlled Berlin. Little did we know, at the time, that we should've gone with our first instinct of the 3rd Reich Berlin tour.

The reason for this was because of our guided named Jared; a seemingly straightlaced American from Indiana who claimed to have studied radical warfare and politics or something of that nature. Seemed like a good guide...but oh how wrong were we.

The tour itself was MASSIVELY boring as we would stop at a random huge building and be lectured about its history and what it all meant in the grand scheme of things. Mind you, we would never actually, ya know, GO IN the building, but simply be talked to about it.

Next building. Stop and talk about it.

Next building. Stop and talk about it.

Oh, and to add to that, we had to buy a one-day public transportation ticket that cost €6.10 in addition to the €10 euro we already spent.

Next building. Stop and talk about it.

And each buidling we would stop and talk about, Scott and I were becoming more and more bothered. By what? We couldn't quite figure it out, but there was something about Jared that just rubbed us the wrong way.

We didn't know it at the time, and wouldn't figure it out until some time after the tour, but we realized that Jared was just a big ole Red Commie!

As we went back over each of Jared's lectures we realized that they were just chalk-full of Communist sentiment. It bothered me a little bit, but with every passing hour Scott was infinitely more upset with him. I think it culminated with Jared's closing words about how the East Germans got screwed once the wall came down because they no longer had a home to live in and food on the table gauranteed for them from the government. What he didn't seem to delve into was the fact that they now had CHOICES...they could choose to leave if they wanted to, they weren't going to be forced to stay against there own will.

Thanks for the tour Red Jared.

Trying to calm ourselves, we were now in "Find NFL Draft" mode. Now you think we spent a lot of time trying to a good french meal in Paris, well I think we spent twice as long trying to find the draft. I bet we tried 6 different places...no luck!

One of the hardest things to when trying to find the Draft was how to ask if a restaurant or pub has it on. Should we ask, "Do you have the NFL Draft on?" or simply, "Do you have ESPN?" or what? It was very weird that people hadn't even heard of ESPN, but then Scott put it into context that we really didn't know what the Premiere channel (the "football" or soccor channel in Europe) was until we got here.

Resigned to just find out what happened on the internet, we logged on at a cafe and the Bills were on the clock. And it didn't take Scott long to go to nfl.com where, get this, they were showing the draft LIVE! Couldn't believe it!

The Chiefs had already chosen Glenn Dorsey at this time and the Bills took some no name corner who won't be able to outrun or outjump Moss. But the good news was that we found it and we got to watch a few more of the draft picks before the place closed down.

Man, that was a long and interesting day...