Berlin!

in front of the East Side Gallery, a section of the Berlin Wall turned into murals

the Reichstag

the Berliner Dom

the Brandenburger Tor

This weekend was my trip to Berlin with my friend Alessia! Berlin is a wonderful city and we had a great time--we didn't see nearly everything there is to see in two days, but it was a great weekend!

To get there, we chose the cheapest option for transportation--mitfahrgelegenheit. No, it's not gibberish, it's a German website that has been organizing carpools for the past 10 years. We found a ride going from St. Gallen, Switzerland (about an hour away) to Berlin for much less then the train or flying. I was a little worried about what basically amounted to a ride with a stranger, but I picked a driver who had 8 years of good reviews. It turned out that he was driving a minivan and had 4 other passengers riding to Berlin, all about my age, including two Swiss French boys, so we chatted in French for awhile. The ride took over 7 hours--we didn't get to Berlin til 12:30 am (left at 5). Jan, the driver, dropped us off at the S-Bahn, kind of like a subway that runs in a circle around Berlin, and we eventually found our hostel. We got to bed late Thursday night/Friday morning.

Friday morning we woke up excited to see the city! Unfortunately it was raining, but that's kind of just a hazard of travel, especially in Germany this summer...but our hostel was really centrally located so convenient to walk. We spent all of Friday in Mitte, the Berlin tourist attraction district. We started with Potsdamer Platz, Berlin's Times Square, and walked past the striking Memorial for Murdered Jews in Europe--it's really interesting to see and takes up a whole city block. Then we went to the famous Brandenburger Tor, which is really impressive and beautiful, and walked down Unter den Linden, Berlin's main tourist street--full of beautiful buildings, cathedrals, palaces, etc. We stopped at the Berliner Dom, which is a beautiful cathedral on the Musueminsel, or Museum Island. We didn't go to any museums there this time because I wanted to see as many things as possible, but Berlin has about a million museums.

We ate lunch at a delicious Italian restaurant and got warm for awhile (I had gnocchi in butter and sage sauce, mmm!) and then went on to Alexanderplatz, which has 3 landmarks: the TV Tower, a really tall building you can go up to the top of (we didn't because of the weather), Marienkirche (the 2nd oldest church in Berlin), and the Rotes Rathaus (red town hall). It was really pretty. Next up was Nikolaiviertel (Nicholas' quarter), an adorable little neighborhood with windy streets. Then on to the Deutscher and Franzoesischer Doms, two cathedrals facing each other, and to the Faussbender and Rauch chocolate store, where several Berlin landmarks are reproduced in chocolate. We were soaked by this time so we took a break in Dunkin Donuts (yes, I was excited to have a donut) for some hot cocoa. Our last stop of the day was the Neue Synagoge, which is modeled after the Alhambra and survived being burned in Kristallnacht.

Saturday, unfortunately, was also rainy. We hopped around the city a bit more instead of sticking to Mitte. Our first stop was the Reichstag, or German Parliament building. They had just made a new rule that you need a reservation to go inside, so we didn't go in, but the outside was beautiful! Next up was the East Side Gallery. This is the longest preserved stretch of the Berlin Wall, turned into a series of murals by various artists. Looking at all the different murals and reading the words was really cool! Next up was the Jewish Museum in Kreuzberg. It was really interesting and informative--the building was beautiful and the architecture inside was really interesting. We tried to go to the Schloss (Castle) Charlottenburg but unfortunately unannounced metro construction made it too hard to get there--next time! Instead we walked to the Gedaichtnis Kirche. It's a famous church nicknamed the "hollow tooth" because it was bombed during WWII and its spire was damaged. I was sad to find out that they were reconstructing the spire and had covered it up--the pictures looked so cool! Our final stop of the weekend was KaDeWe, the Berlin answer to Harrod's. It was really cool, plus they had a section of American groceries, which was exciting for me--I got to show Alessia all my favorite foods!

This morning we got up super early to take the train for 9 hours, and got home this afternoon....thoughts on Berlin as a whole: I really liked it! It reminded me of Paris in that it seemed that there was always more to see and do. I feel like there was a lot I didn't see. Two days barely scratched the surface. I was surprised at how few tourists there were, how early things closed, and how empty the city seemed in general. New York would have been super crowded on a weekend in July. Maybe the weather, or maybe everyone was on August vacation early? I liked the architecture a lot as well, and all the history in the city. I would love to go back. A lot of things in Berlin seem new or almost new--I guess it's all post-war and post-fall of the Wall. The Hauptbahnhof (main station) especially looked really futuristic.

Thoughts on Germany after seeing most of the country by car and train: I saw sooo many wind turbines and solar panels. I'm so impressed with Germany's alternative energy commitment. The Autobahn was not as scary as I expected. By train today, I got to see Frankfurt (looked a lot like New York, with all the skyscrapers) and the Black Forest (Schwarzwald--really scenic). Why is the Black Forest called the Black Forest, I wonder? Throughout the entire car and train rides it always seemed like there was a castle up on a hill somewhere not too far away. I think all of rural Germany is just full of castles.

So in other news, last week was pretty quiet except for a surprise visit from my friend Tony last weekend! He is stationed in Bavaria and drove over to see me before deploying to Afghanistan Monday. He probably won't have time to read this but good luck and stay safe!!!

I am about 110 pages into my German copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It's teaching me so many new words! One new idiom: jemanden auf die Palme bringen: literally, drive someone up the palm tree, or in English, drive someone crazy!