Finally in Berlin

After a good ten months of living in Germany, I finally made it to Berlin!

I was saving this trip for when my friends visited, because my friend Erin studied abroad last spring, and knew I was going to be in Germany for the year, so she saved going to Germany for a trip to visit me. So I patiently waited ten months to go to the most touristy and arguably the most fun city in Germany.

And wow did it not disappoint.

My friends hung out around Dusseldorf and Cologne for a couple days while I worked, and then on Wednesday (June 21) we all headed off to Berlin on the ICE train. Fun fact about German trains, no one speaks on them. Like legit no one. Besides us three talking it was dead silent.

So we got to Berlin around 11:30 PM and headed off to our hotel/hostel thing (not super sure what it was. It had both words on the sign) and up to our ungodly hot 3 person studio. We got into bed almost immediately, but stayed up talking for honestly about 3 hours. High school sleepover style.

On day one I found us a cute little combo cafe/bike shop for breakfast and we ate a leisurely breakfast outside in the beautiful weather (this part is importantly to the story). We then headed over to Brandenburg Gate for our free tour (which was literally amazing-- again, Sandeman's is the best). The tour took us all throughout Berlin to see the major sites and tell a bit about Berlin's history.

The breakfast place we ate at 

And, of course, my food!

The Brandenburg Gate

Part of the wall

The Concert house

After the tour we honestly really needed to find an ATM, so we set off in the direction of Alexanderplatz. And then it downpoured. After being in Germany so long, you'd think I would've known to have an umbrella handy at all times. But, alas, I did not. 

We got rained on.

Besides getting rained on, another theme of this trip was finding bathrooms (lookin @ you, Erin). During this downpour, we were originally standing under a tree (which was not great, as the rain quickly turned into a thunderstorm), but then decided to make a break for it to get to the McDonald's across the street for their free bathrooms. Afterwards we did some Birkenstock shopping (they're way cheaper here) and ate a quick lunch. And then back out in the (much gentler) rain to get to the ATM, and see Alexanderplatz and TK Maxx (naturally). 

It's beautiful!

Alexanderplatz and the TV Tower

We then went to the DDR Museum, which I thought was really well laid out and extremely informative about what life was like in East Germany right after the war. My mom had told me about going to East Berlin in the 70s during the time when my family lived in Hamburg, and she said that she will never forget how bleak and depressed the area looked. Also, this museum has a fun twist that I honestly don't want to spoil for everyone-- if you to the museum, make sure to check out the model DDR house 😊 (it's really not all that exiting, just a bit unexpected). 

Throughout the day we saw a bunch of randomly beautiful buildings and sites. Berlin is much, much different from any other major German city I've been in, and I can really tell why people love it. It's one of those cities were you can almost feel the history around you, and can't help but appreciate all the beautiful buildings on either side of you. 

Berliner Dom

Neues Museum

For dinner that night I found what turned out to be a really great Swabian restaurant, that served traditional dishes from the region of Germany I was in during my study abroad semester in the fall. I had some spatzle with lentils and sausage, and I basically forced my friends to try Maultaschen, which are like giant, German meat raviolis. They're honestly pretty amazing.

Day two consisted of mostly retracing our steps on the tour from the first day, but stopping for a bit at each place to appreciate the site, and actually get to stop into the museums. We started first with the East Side Gallery, which is a section of the wall with huge murals painted on it. Then we went to see the Reichstag (Parliament) building, the Brandenburg Gate, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the memorial museum there, the Topography of Terror museum, and then the Checkpoint Charlie area. It was an extremely full day. Typing this all out, it's honestly no wonder we were pretty done by the time we got to Checkpoint Charlie. Oh also, we of course started with another AMAZING breakfast (bc why not).

The adorable restaurant we ate breakfast at

My delicious breakfast that container potatoes au gratin (10x better than hash browns)

East Side Gallery

Me and my two countries

The German Parliament

The Brandenburg Gate

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Checkpoint Charlie

That night for dinner we sampled another type of German cuisine-- Bayern food in a very touristy biergarten! I finally tried Schweinhaxe (or pork knuckle) and OH MY GOD was it amazing! 

The third and final day was mostly taken up by a six hour tour of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp that is located about 45 minutes away from Berlin. Our tour guide was incredibly knowledgable and engaging, and he was clearly very passionate about learning about history, and about WWII in particularly. As I said after visiting Terezin in the Czech Republic, I really think everyone should take the time to visit a concentration camp, if at all possible, because it is a very sobering experience that will stick with you for your whole life. The feeling of getting off the train on the very platforms where soon-to-be prisoners got off, and walking the exact path that they took to the camp was moving, but it really hit me when I saw the "Arbeit macht frei" [work sets you free] sign on the gates of the camp. This phrase is something I knew well before I started learning German, and is a phrase that, I'm sure, gave many prisoners a false sense of hope during their time in the camps. The experience I had at this camp was very different than the one I had in Terezin, and visiting these two different locations really made me think about all the steps that were taken during the war to contain and control populations of people that were seen as lesser, or not human. As I said, everyone truly ought to visit a camp at some point in their life. 

After our tour of Sachsenhausen, we didn't have much time at all left in Berlin, so we basically just grabbed our stuff from the hostel and jumped on our train (after a failed attempt to help a nice British man use a cigarette vending machine). 

My friends only had a day left in Germany after that, which we spent visiting Benrath Palace in Dusseldorf. 

Having them here was a nice distraction from what can sometimes be a monotonous pattern of going to work every day and going about my normal life (I mean, besides all the amazing trips I take, of course). It was also pretty cool because all three of our families have German roots, so it was not only cool for me to show them around, but for them to see a bit of the country where their families came from. I was also able to impress them with my German speaking skills, and also with some really yummy German foods (I PROMISE it's not all bratwursts and pretzels), so that was awesome too!

This past weekend was my much anticipated trip to Warsaw, which, spoiler alert, was FANTASTIC. I'll try to post an update later this week....!