Berlin has easily been my favorite weekend thus far for a couple of reasons, but if I start with those, you won't get the magic of the whole story.
It begins Thursday night, when we decide we should have a "quiet night in" because we leave at 5:20 AM on Friday morning. This "quiet night in" lasts until about 2:00 in the morning, and I wake up to a girl on my floor knocking and saying "we're meeting in the foyer now." Thank God I had packed before. The only things I forgot were my iPod (I can live without) and my camera charger (which I was pissed about). Anyhow, we got to the train station on time; small miracles do happen. I proceeded to sleep on a double seat for forty five minute intervals during the three hour train right.
Ah, waking up to Berlin. We arrived at the Haupbahnhof (main train station), which was rebuilt in 2006 for the World Cup. It is an immense structure, made of mostly glass. We bummed around the city for a while, visiting Alexanderplatz (one of the million historical platz..es). Then we got lunch in an Italian restaurant. I got delicious lasagna, but I could only eat 30% of it because it was only 11:00. It was at the restaurant that I realized my camera had no battery. :-(
After lunch, we walked around another square until we met for our bike tour at two. The tour was three and a halfish hours long. Did you know Berlin is nine times the size of Paris? Riding around, it was so beautiful. It's tragic to think about how everything must have looked when it was bombed and then gutted in the winter of 1945. We rode past so many things, the Rotrathaus, the red governmental building that houses the Burgermeister (literally town master; mayor). Berlin has the world's third largest gay population. The city slogan that the mayor campaigned on was "poor, but sexy." Fabulous. We rode past an old communist monument to "Communist Santa" Karl Marx. I enjoyed the Fernsehturm, a dome built by the Swedes in East Berlin to show the West that they were prospering. Interestingly enough, when the sun shines on the dome, it has a bright cross on it. Ironic, considering super Communist (read: godless heathens) East Berlin. Of course we saw the Wall, and even rode past Hitler's bunker. It's actually just a parking lot for a residential area with a small information board. Our guide told us they kept it low-key so the Neo-Nazis don't have a shrine to worship, which is very, very wise.
We rode past basically everything to see in Berlin, so I'll just skip to my favorites and move on to Saturday. My favorite was easily the Brandenburg Gate. It's one of the original entrances to Berlin from the era of the Prussian kings. After our bike tour, we walked around the area around our hostel and ate at a small cafe. They had "American" food, which was fun to try. The burger was decent, but they had a different sauce. The fries were spectacular though! Then we got back to the hostel and thought that we would take a quick nap before we went out for the night. The plans didn't quite pan out, however, because none of us wanted to get back up! It had been a long, long day of travelling and hostel-paying-for-in-a-group-of-thirty. We decided to call it a day and get up early to visit some touristy sights.
We did get out of the hostel by eight on Saturday, which is another miracle. We got to the Reichstag (the government building) around nine because we had to buy tickets and such. We waited in line for about two hours to go into the Reichstag and up into the dome. The wait was surprisingly fun. It was a touch chilly, so we pretended we were penguins and ate candy I had stashed in my bag. When we got into the Reichstag, we took the elevator up to the dome and walked around and learned about the history of the government building. It's quite colorful, like everything in Berlin! I used most of my camera video to take 360 degrees of pictures of Berlin. You can really see from the top how huge the city is.
After the Reichstag, we wandered down Unter den Linden, or Under the Linden trees. The trees were planted a long time ago, but were chopped down for firewood or bombed, so they're only about sixty years old. Still, beautiful pedestrian walkway. I ate currywurst (love it) and we did some touristy shopping. We were planning to go to the Pergammnon (spelling?!), but I was meeting up with a friend from high school and our group got distracted by a flea market. I swear, Zeynep has a sixth sense for them.
My friend met me just outside the museum and it was so good to see him. His dad is German, so he goes to University in Berlin. After we graduated I was sure I would never see him again; it was such a nice surprise to be able to. We ate dinner at a popular Italian food chain, Vapiano. It was good but a touch expensive. Kind of like a Panera but with dinner food. We went back to the hostel and bummed around for a while. Then we went to a club Christian knew about and had fun dancing. We also got in for free because it was a friend's birthday! Hoorah! We got back to the hostel at about three in the morning.
Sunday we had to check out by ten and we wanted to do some other sightseeing, so we got up around eight. We were out the door by nine and spend most of the rest of our time at the Memorial to the 6 Million Murdered Jews of Europe. It is very somber, and the inside museum-y part of the memorial was heartbreaking. There was a section of letters from the people who were sent to the concentration camps and there was one from a little six year old who said "Papa, I love you very much and I know I am never coming back." Afterwards, we got doner (I got a crepe), and laid in the sun. Then we had to take the train back to our group's meeting point.
Which is where my only complaint about the trip comes in. Our trip was organized by our RA, who is just flat-out incompetent. She told us to meet at two different times, and also did not tell all the people and just relied on word of mouth. Furthermore, she told us to meet at the train station to walk to the bus station together. I would rather just be told where the bus station is and the time we are leaving. Her phone was also off during the hour preceding our departure, so we couldn't even call her to tell her that I read the map wrong for the S-bahn stops and we had to walk a few blocks to the meeting point. I was also very put off when she was angry at the group for the stress caused by her own lack of planning. Not my fault you're a terrible RA. She also lives on my floor and sings(actually off-key shouting)/plays guitar horribly at eleven at night, so I'm not particularly inclined to like her. Anyhow, other than our stressful leaving situation, Berlin was an amazing weekend. I hope to go back at LEAST once, and perhaps twice if I can go to the Christkindlmarkt in Berlin, even though Dresden has a fantastic one. Thus ends my weekend adventure. Perhaps tomorrow I'll be able to post about this week/upcoming Prague! Maybe I'll try to manage my responsibilities responsibly, we'll see how it works out!
Tschuss!!
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