Guten tag Berlin!

Oh goodness, another weekend and another trip to a famous locale in Europe :) After being separated from Julia and Alex for oh... 2 days... I boarded a flight for Berlin! Although it definitely does not rank high on my list of beautiful cities (the Germans, especially the East Germans, unfortunately don't win any awards for architecture...), it was a history and Christmas spirit-filled weekend that was a great way to get acquainted with the country. Germany, and especially Berlin, is famous for its Christmas markets - small, temporary villages of wooden booths that spring up in every square in the city and feature craft and food vendors. Berlin alone has 60!

DAY 1: I arrived in Berlin after lunch and took a bus to our hotel, an almost hostel-like operation where the average age of the staff and the guests was about 25. There was even a bar in the lobby and a vending machine with cold beers! What a deal. After Julia and Alex arrived by train, we decided to walk around the area. The Reichstag (actually now officially called the Bundestag), the German parliament building, was pretty close to the hotel and we decided to wait in line and walk through the huge glass dome on top of the building. It gave us spectacular views of the city on our first day there, but it was open at the top so we were still freezing inside!

Afterwards we headed to the nearby Brandenburg Gate, an important symbol of Berlin for hundreds of years. Of course spotting the Starbucks next door, we had to stop for a mocha and a muffin served with central heating :P When we emerged it was already dark (!) and we made our way to Unter den Linden, a main drag of the city that dead ends into the Brandenburg Gate. This led us to several Christmas markets, where we strolled among the booths muching candied almonds and drinking hot gluhwein (mulled red wine) before grabbing a delicious but kind of gross looking and definitely heart-stopping meal of schnitzel, gravy, and potatoes fried with bacon and onions. When in Rome, right?

Julia chowing down on schnitzel!

 

DAY 2: We had been told not to miss the free student-led tour of the city called newBerlin, so we bundled up and met our tour guide, Louis, a recent graduate from Manchester, England who had an undergraduate degree in modern German history. So he kind of knew what he was talking about! It was an amazing tour and he was the best guide we could have asked for - but it was 3 1/2 hours of walking outside in 1 degree weather. No joke. I stopped being able to feel my legs after about 5 minutes outside though, so after the numbness over my entire body set in I stopped feeling it as much :) Hitler's bunker (now a green patch in a parking lot of a condo complex), the Memorial to the Murdered Jews, Checkpoint Charlie, and Museum Island (an island... with museums on it...) were some of the highlights of the tour. I learned a LOT about recent German history and I realize how much I was completely unaware of. Julia and Alex, both history majors, were having rather large nerd-gasms as well!

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews

Checkpoint Charlie - aka a HUGE tourist trap

After defrosting over a quick lunch, we headed to the DDR Museum, a small private museum that gives you a glimpse into what life was like in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). We got to pretend to drive in a real Trabi and admire the oh-so-stylish fashions of the time.
Of course, we had to head back to the markets for dinner! Even though we'd gone to two on Thursday night, there were another few within minutes so we grabbed delicious sausages for dinner and perused some more, nibbling on the seemingly endless forms of fried dough and sugar that abounded.

Froheweihnachten means Merry Christmas!

DAY 3: After a low-key morning, we hopped the U-bahn to the East Side Gallery. It's about a 1/4 mile long chunk of the wall that has been covered by huge murals by international artists, mostly depicting messages of peace, reconciliation and human rights. We spent an hour admiring the art and reflecting on the sentiments behind the images.

 

A delicious falafel sandwich for lunch led to settling in Balzac Coffee (with the delightful emblem of a naked cherub riding a vespa) for a couple of hours of chatting over hot drinks and more muffins. Finally dragging our butts out into the cold, we walked to the Pergamon Museum of the Near East on Museum Island. On the way, we passed by a flea market chock-full of antique Communist merchandise - I could have bought my very own hammer and sickle star pin! The museum was a great detour and we learned about early Islamic art as well as some very impressive feats of architecture from ancient Mesopotamia and Greece.

 Mosaics are rather exciting!

The Ishtar Gate

Our last stop was the museum underneath the Holocaust memorial we had visited earlier. It's built completely underground, so you'd never know it was there if you didn't see the stairs! It was an extremely sobering visit, and focused more on the humanity of the victims than other exhibits and museums I've visited. I felt like I learned a lot about the sequence of events and less publicized aspects of the Nazi atrocities, and it was definitely an experience that touched me profoundly.
The last dinner in Berlin was a fancy affair - we sat down in a chic Italian restaurant and enjoyed pizza and prosecco while nursing our tired feet. I still couldn't feel mine, so it was less of an issue for me :P

DAY 4: Really. Bad. Day. Got to the airport only to realize that my return flight (on a different airline than before) left from the OTHER airport in Berlin. I'm an idiot. There was no time to get there before my flight left, so I watched the departure time come and go. After having a minor breakdown in the middle of the terminal and calling home at an obscene hour (sorry Mom and Dad, I know you thought I'd died or something!), I had to buy a new plane ticket. The only consolation was that on airFrance 1. everyone spoke French and it was quite soothing to hear it again and 2. they served an actual lunch that was quite delicious. Needless to say I'll be quadruple checking every online booking I ever make in the future...

I only have TWO MORE WEEKS left in this beautiful city, and I'm determined to make the most of it! The only problem is the general gloominess and rain, but there are several large Christmas markets that I want to check out and there are favorite cafes yet to be revisited. I'll keep you posted on any new developments - but until then, I love and miss you all and can't wait to be back in the US of A on December 19th!