Berlin

This was the start of our second ten day break: Spring Break 2012 Lugano Style! We left Thursday around 6pm and took an overnight train to Berlin. It was our first experience taking an overnight train, and let me just say that it wasn't as nice as I thought. They were 6 person cabins, with three-tiered bunk beds so closely packed that you couldn't even sit up. A little problem for anyone with a slight dose of claustrophobia. I took some Dramamine and just passed out, but unfortunately the train ride we wanted was booked so we had to get the next one with 3 changes, the first one being at 5:30am. So didn't get a real full nights sleep but we ended up getting into Berlin at  around 11:15. We checked into our hostel, well our room couldn't and decided to go around and explore ourselves.  We kind of made our own walking tour up since we arrived to late to go on the guided one. We made the right decision though because with a map we pretty much hit all of the attractions the first day.

The first thing we saw was the Reichstag, or parliament building but didn't go inside because the line was way too long.

Probably the most famous and well known landmarks in Berlin is the Brandenburg Gate, the former city gate. It is the only remaining gate of a series through which Berlin was once entered. It is much more beautiful when it's lit up at night. 

Next we went to the Holocaust Memorial, which is a national memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. It consists of a 19,000 square meters site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern. The architect specifically designed it actually modeled after the graveyard in Prague (which you will see later). Hitler had once planned to make the city of Prague an actual museum to the Jewish culture once the whole Jewish population was eradicated. The cemetery in Prague was the only place where the Jews were allowed to bury their people, and became so overcrowded that they even needed to start burying them vertically and in several layers. The graves were piled one on top of the other. 

 

 The architect specifically designed the memorial so that walking through it made you nauseous. The floor was sloped up and down and all of the slabs are different heights so you kind of feel like you're walking through a maze. 

The Berlin Wall’s remnants today of the 155km wall are scattered across the city, but you can follow all or sections of its former path along the 160km-long Berliner Wall Trail, a signposted walking and cycling path that follows the former border fortifications. The longest surviving stretch is the East Side Gallery. It was cool to just walk around the city and see random slabs of what used to be the wall. 

 The next spot on our make-shift Berlin tour was Checkpoint Charlie, which was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War.

After our city tour, we went back to the hostel and got ready to go out for dinner. We had MEXICAN, and it was incredible. I finally got to eat fajitas which I had been craving since the day I got here. They were amazing, even though I had to make due with chicken because steak was pretty expensive. Weirdly I have been able to eat peppers since I've come abroad which I used to not be able to stand back home. I guess I just miss vegetables so much that I'll take anything that I can get. The thing we didn't really know about Berlin was that it had a ridiculous night life. It has one of the biggest clubbing arenas in the world, and half of them are secretly hidden underground that you have to be on a guest list to get into. Most of the clubs don't even open until 12pm and don't even close until 6 or 7 in the morning. I stayed in the first night to give my ankle a rest, but the second night I did go out. We went to this club in a warehouse which was really cool, but apparently the main floor didn't even open until 5 am. We made it pretty late out but didn't make it that late. We stayed until 3 am because we were apparently in what looked like the gay floor. Robby and Adam swore that it wasn't a gay bar, but as soon as they said that, this guy started taking off his shirt and dancing with another guy. The next morning was a pretty chill day. We went out to lunch, which ended up taking about until 2 pm because the service and the food was so terrible. We made our way to the East Side Gallery where the famous part of the Berlin Wall is. One side was covered with graffiti while the other side was filled with these intricate artistically expressive murals. 

There were hundreds of these murals lined up, with the most famous being the famous portrait of Soviet leader Brezhnev kissing GDR leader Erich Honecker. 

We left Berlin the next morning and headed on our way to Prague!