Berlin, Berlin!

The Brandenburger Tor

My first mini-vaca in Europe to Berlin was a success! Berlin is seriously a cool city with such history that still has a big presence everywhere, and also some of the best food stands in the world I think... It reminded me a lot of New York City in a lot of ways--they are both not the prettiest cities but there is always always something to do, have really fantastic public transportation, and Berlin's Tiergarten is practically a mirror image of Central Park. After being there for only four days, we really only skimmed the surface of all the possibilities of things to see and do, and I could have stayed for quite a while longer. For the first two nights, I stayed with a friend from UM, who is studying at the Goethe Institut in Berlin and lives with a host family in East Berlin. It was really nice knowing someone in the city and getting a less touristy picture of Berlin, especially in terms of nightlife. The next two nights I stayed in extra beds in my friend's hostel rooms in the Mitte--not having to pay for any accommodations made me feel less bad about spending more money in Berlin than my whole first month in Schwäbisch Hall!

With Hera at the Altes Museum

Denkmal für ermordeten Juden Europas

Our train got us to Berlin a little after 9 on Wednesday night and after dropping our stuff off at Corey's place, we went to the Stammtisch for the Berlin Goethe Institut which was really cool, and made me laugh to compare it to our little Stammtischs in Schwäbisch Hall! Thursday was a pretty touristy day, but we covered quite a lot of sites: the Brandenburger Tor, Reichstag, Memorial for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and Checkpoint Charlie. I was a little bitter because I got scammed in the U-Bahn to buying a fake day-pass, but luckily we never got our tickets checked... whoops! I met Corey and his French friend, Antoine, for dinner at a famous German brewery before meeting up with the other UM students at their hostel bar, which was more crowded than I've ever seen at a hostel! Friday we spent the entire day on Museuminsel, an island in the middle of the city literally covered in very cool museums. We covered four of the most famous museums, progressively spending less time in each as our attention spans allowed. Saturday was a really beautiful day, so we walked through the Tiergarten for a while and past the zoo, then back into the Mitte and along the Mauer and through the Topographie des Terrors, which is a outdoor museum in the basement of the old Gestapo headquarters. That afternoon I got to meet up with my good friend Alexandra, who is in Berlin for her spring break with the Max Kade group from UM (the same program that I went to Cologne last year with). It was unfortunate that my little break from Goethe only overlapped with their vacation by a day, but still nice to see her! Even though my time here has been going by really fast, I know I'll be grateful to get to see friends from home sporadically during my time here later on and will help me from getting too homesick!

Just passing some llamas along the riverwalk

Yesterday I woke up after getting probably three hours of sleep, and we headed out to the Berlin flea market before 10. The flea market was a really long stretch of stands selling pretty much everything you can imagine and was a little cold, but very cool and somewhere I could see myself going often if I lived in Berlin. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel, I packed up my stuff, and managed to get to my train a mere 5 minutes before it left, also whoops... The train back to Nürnberg was quite long but comfortable, and then we had to take an S-Bahn, bus, and train to finally got back into Schwäbisch Hall. Needless to say, the traveling, lack of sleep, and many kilometers walked made me quite exhausted, which is what I blame for my taking the wrong bus home last night. It was quite an exciting weekend, but I've been enjoying my day off of classes today in little Schwäbisch Hall!

Also, quick update on the flu I had last week... Apparently it was a strain of noro-virus and has been spread around so much and so quickly that Ines had no school on Friday and today! Talk about German efficiency. ;)