Berlin

The train ride to Berlin was pretty uneventful. We got in and to our CSer's place without any major problems. Steffi is our current host. She is 25, originally from Vienna and is studying in Berlin. Once we got to her place we ended up going over to her friend's place who lives in her building for dinner. There was a bunch of people getting together so there ended up being us and about 10 other guys all sitting around eating pizza, drinking beer and having ice cream for desert. Apparently this is something that is universal among male college students, haha. They were really fun and interesting to talk to and we ended up staying there late in to the night talking about traveling and politics and anything other topic you can think of. Once we got back to Steffi's we just talked a little longer and then headed to bed.

The next morning we got up for a free walking tour of Berlin. We didn't have a map or anything so I had to look up directions and pray that I could figure it all out in time for the tour. It all went pretty smoothly though. The tour was amazing. Berlin has SO much history to it. We literally covered around 800 years in about 3.5 hours. A lot of the focus was on WWI, WWII and the cold war obviously. Our tour guide, Stephanie was from New Zealand and was amazing. She's a history buff with a journalism degree and is currently writing a book. I can't believe how much she knows about the city and it's history.

After the tour she invited everyone out for some German schnitzel and beer. Only 4 of us ended up taking her up on her offer but I'm so glad we did. We all ended up talking for 2.5 hours and we decided to go on a tour to the concentration camps with her the next day. She is super outgoing (which you obviously have to be to be a tour guide) and was a ton of fun to talk to.

On the tour I started talking to a guy, Oliver, and found out he is from Texas. He's on a 6 week trip around Europe and had just gotten in the night before. He came out to eat with us and joined us for the concentration camp guide as well, so that's awesome. Love meeting random people! I also got to impart my traveling knowledge with him. He's only been to Scotland with his family so the whole backpacking trip thing was new to him. I love feeling like a veteran now, haha.

The tour and food pretty much took up our day so we just headed back to Steffi's place for dinner and to meet the new CSer that is staying with her. Nadine is originally from Egypt but living in Berlin and is backpacking around Europe for a couple of months. The night was a calm one. We were getting up early the next day and I am still trying to fight off getting sick so sleep was necessary.

I got up at 6:45 today in order to go to the Reichstag which is Berlin's parliamentary building that has a huge class dome on top where people can walk around and see a panoramic view of the city. It opens at 8 but the lines can get huge and we were leaving for the concentration camp Sachsenhausen at 11 so we wanted to get there asap. I think we made it there around 8:30. We being Hilary, me and our new CS friend Nadine. Nadine got in the night before and is originally from Cairo, Egypt but has been living in Munich for a while and was backpacking around Europe.

8:30 was the perfect time to show up. We got right in, walked around and were out within an hour/hour and a half. The dome was a lot better than I expected it to be. It is free and they give you an audio tour guide. There is a platform that gradually winds around the dome as it goes higher. The audio guide talks about the history and all of the buildings you see as you walk around the dome. There are sensors that tell the audio guide where you are in the dome so it knows what you're looking at - very handy. The day was cloudy but there was only 1 building I couldn't really see, so not a huge deal.

After that we went on a search for food and then met up with our tour at 11. There was almost 40 people going to the concentration camp so it was a little less personal than the walking tour which only had 20, but it was still fun getting to hang out with Stephanie another day, I really liked her. Oliver met up with us and then on the train to the camps I started talking to another girl, Ashley who was there with her husband. Loved them!

They are only 23 years old but have been together since there were 26 and married since 20 or 21. Normally I would like something like this is crazy and give them another couple of years before they are divorced cause they are so young, but this is not the case with them. They seriously were the cutest couple and seemed so happy and right for each other. Now, I was only with them for about a day and a half, but it is really hard to convince me that a couple is 'right for each other' at this age. It is also really unusual to meet a couple where you like both people, but Ashley and Andy were also the exception for this. The 6 of us - Hilary, Nadine, Oliver, Ashley, Andy and I - all hung out for the day and I got to talk to both of them together and apart. Andy is a carpenter and Ashley works at a bank. They are spending 6 months traveling around Europe together just because they wanted to. Awesome! I really hope one day I find someone willing to do something that amazing and travel with me. Neither of them have traveled much and Andy even said he doesn't have a huge desire to travel, but Ashley wanted to and he said okay so now they're in Europe. They both seem to be having a great time so far and are even considering the far-fetched idea of moving over here. Andy has a UK passport so it would be entirely possible - very jealous. Anyways, to sum it up I'm so glad I met them and they give me hope for the possibility of finding someone in the future... very strange idea for me, but I guess it's gotta happen at some point, right? :)

Sachsenhausen was different than Auschwitz. It was a work camp, not an extermination camp, and it housed only men. It was also the main camp set up so the Nazi's could figure out how to 'perfect' all other concentration camps. It almost seemed impossible at this point to learn anything new about the Holocaust but unbelievably I did. For example, there were gas vans that some camps used to kill people when they didn't have gas chambers. They would load people into the van and then direct the exhaust pipe into the van and leave it running until everyone suffocated to death - awful. There is obviously a lot more to Sachsenhausen but like Auschwitz to much to put in a blog. I feel like I am close to being an expert on the subject now and am not afraid to talk about it so if you want to know more and pick my brain when I get home, feel free.

After the concentration camp we invited Oliver, Ashley and Andy to come with Nadine, Hilary and I to a museum we heard about which was set up in the Nazi point of view. Most museums are from the victim's view, so we thought it'd be interesting to check tihs one out. All 6 of us headed down there. The museum was cool and again, learned even more. Especially about the Nazi propaganda and the people that were involved in making decisions.

Next on our stop was food. Oliver had a bus to catch to Amsterdam so we said our goodbyes and were down to 5. We found a restaurant and the rest of the night was a lot of fun and therapeutic. We were all really open about everything we had seen that  day and how we felt about it. It turns out Andy's grandfather's both fought in the war, but for different sides. One of them was from Ukraine and was an intelligence officer for the Nazi's. The other was a fighter pilot for Canada. Very interesting to hear what he knew about their experiences. We also had a lot of conversation based around the Nazi soldiers themselves and how so many of them could have done such awful things. We learned that most of them had been in training since the age of 12 which means there was probably some major brain washing involved. Again, I won't get in to all of this but it was great being able to hash it out with people who saw the same things we did and were experiencing the same emotions.

The next day we were so physically and emotionally drained we slept in until noon. We were finally up and out of the house by 1:30. We went to see the memorial for murdered Jews in the center of Berlin. The memorial is really different. It is in a huge square right outside the Brandenburger Tor which is the iconic gate for Berlin. It is composed of hundreds of big blocks of cement all spaced equally apart from each other but they are different heights. The artist is American actually, that was surprising to me, and he said he wanted to leave the memorial up for interpretation. Some people see Jews lined up in a row to be murdered, others see soldiers marching, others see tombstones, etc, etc. I'd suggest looking it up if you get the urge to google something. It's really interesting to look at and it was to big to take a good picture. I don't know the official name but memorial to the Jews in Berlin should probably get you to the right spot.

After that Hilary wanted to check out the Berlin MoMa. It was Thursday so the museums were free. So glad. If I had paid for that MoMa I'd been so mad. Modern Art is just not my thing. So many super bizarre things that just aren't art to me. I'm a big believer of 'to each their own' so I won't say that they aren't art in generally cause obviously a lot of people think they are since they were in the Berlin MoMa, but it just doesn't interest me in the slightest.

Next was the Pergamon museum. Here we randomly ran in to Ashley and Andy again and spent some time walking around with them. The Pergamon is most famous for the Gates of Ishtar in Babylon and the Pergamon Alter. Both were really cool and overwhelming in size. But they were all reconstructions of the originals. Original pieces were put in to the reconstructions so that was cool, but obviously not as impressive if they were originals.

We were meeting up with the girls we met in Prague that night so we said goodbye to Ashley and Andy and went home to change and attempt to make ourselves look half-way decdent which we don't do often. We met up with everyone at a bar called Madam Claude's and spent the night drinking a couple of beers and meeting lots of new people. Since it was a Thursday the transportation systems stop running regularly around 12:30 so we had to leave around midnight to catch everything we needed to get home.

Friday our first stop was the East Side Gallery. This is the longest stretch of the Berlin wall still in tact. It is 1.3km if I remember correctly - which honestly is about a 50/50 chance. The city contracted a bunch of different artists from all over the wall to paint on it. The result is a really cool strip of really interesting art. I loved it. If I lived in Berlin I'd go there all the time. Definitely a must see.

After that we headed to a bombed out church we heard about but that ended up being a disappointment so we went straight to Tiergarten which is the major park in Berlin. It is huge and in the middle of it is a monument called the Victory Tower. We wanted to see it but it is under construction right now so it was pretty much completely covered up - fail. Next was the Berlin castle (every major city in Prague has one, of course). I wasn't really up for seeing another castle and/or garden area but we didn't really have anything else to do and I knew Hilary wanted to go so we went. I'm glad we did. It wasn't the best castle I've seen, but the gardens were beautiful and the sun was out so we just hung out by the water fountain and took a stroll around the area for awhile.

Our last stop was to the last remaining part of the Berlin wall we hadn't seen yet. It was different than the other two (the first one we saw on the free walking tour the first day) because it had part of the death strip still in tact. The Berlin wall actually two walls in its final stage. There was an inner wall and an outer wall and the area between was called the death strip. It was called this because the soldiers had a shoot to kill policy at anyone who entered the death strip. I think 136 people died in the death strip trying to escape to West Berlin. There was a memorial set up here with all of their pictures. I was surprised at how many were children and young adults. This was the most impactful part of the wall by far and there was a lot of information signs posted everywhere so it was really informative as well.

That night we wanted to take our host, Steffi, out for cocktails (she's not a beer person). We decided to hit up the Carnival of Cultures which is a huge once a year carnival that happened to be going on right now - score. We got there around 11 and it stopped at 12 so we didn't do much but we got to see the crazy night life there which was fun. After that we headed to a cocktail bar that had happy hour all night. We hung out there until around 3:30 or 4 when they finally kicked us out. It was a really fun night being able to hang out with just our host.

After getting to bed around 5am we slept in until 1ish I think. It was our last full day in Berlin but we didn't really have all that much left to do so it was pretty much our day to relax which was great. We went to a main square called Alexanderplatz and then went on a wild goose chase around the city for some souvenirs. That ended in semi-success and we headed back to our host's place for a BBQ and to watch a soccer game between Milan and Munich that apparently all of Europe was watching that night.

Once we got back to Steffi's she had invited over a couple of other CSers who had requested to stay with her but couldn't since we were there. They were two guys from CA, Wolfgang and Kip. Yep, best names ever. Wolfgang's real name in Jacob but when he got to university he thought it'd be funny to try and introduce himself as Wolfgang. The joke worked too well and now that's what he is known as. Kip is short for Christopher I guess, never heard that before. Later their CS host, Sarah showed up and we all went to the store to get food and then headed to the BBQ in Steffi's garden which the rest of the boys we had met the first night in Berlin.

Hilary and the Berlin boys were all really in to the soccer game but me, Steffi, Sarah and the Cali boys could car less so we all hung out during the game and talked. I talked to Sarah most of the time and had a really interesting conversation with her about Germany and repercussions of WWII. Pretty intense but very enlightening to hear it from someone German born. She said they are still very much taught that they should almost be ashamed of being German because of the war and what they grandparents did. People even tell them to say they are from a different country when they travel. Reminded me a lot of how a lot of people from the states say they are Canadian when they travel. Anyways, we had a good couple of hours talking about everything there is to talk about. Once the game was over and the food and beer were gone, Sarah and the boys left and we crashed.

Sunday was our last day in Berlin. We got up and met up with Nicole which was one of the girls we met in Prague that is studying in Berlin. The three of us went to a major flea market that happens on Sundays just to check it out. There is apparently karaoke usually out in the middle of the park in an amphitheater-like area which would have been really cool to see. Unfortunately, because of the Carnival going on there wasn't any, sad. So we ended up going to the Carnival to see the major parade that was going on. We met up with Sarah and the Cali boys again and tried to get close enough to see the parade but that failed miserably. There were thousands and thousands of people around and even trying to move 10 feet took forever. Eventually we gave up and decided to go back to Steffi's to finish packing and catch our train to Hamburg.

We said goodbye to Steffi, got our bags and took a picture with the local Doner Kebab man that we had befriended during our time in Berlin. He owned a shop around the corner that had the best Kebab's ever for only 2 euro. I think I had one every day I was there and one day I had two making it literally all I ate that day. So delicious. Plus it had carbs, meat and vegetables - totally well balanced, healthy meal! Anyways, we got our last kebab, took our picture with him and then headed to the train. This is where I currently am. We got lucky and got a whole cabin to ourselves again. The train ride is only 2 hours though. We are hopefully going to be meeting up with our host Martin when we get there and then have a whirlwind time of a little under 2 days in Hamburg. Should be fun.