Berlin

I'm determined to get caught up on my blogging, so here comes the first of 3 blogs this week. (Edit:  I wrote this part last week and produced zero blogs, so don't get your hopes up.)

Never before have I visited a city with as much recent, tumultuous history as Berlin.  We got a taste of this history on our first day in Berlin during our bike tour led by our awesome Scottish tour guide, Ryan.  We saw steps where Hitler and Goebbels once gave speeches to massive crowds, we saw where bullet holes still remain in Germany's historic museums, we saw the location of the first Nazi book burning led by college students much like us, we saw Checkpoint Charlie, we saw the longest section of the Berlin Wall still standing, and, of course, we saw the Brandenburg Gate.  Just reflecting back now, it is amazing to me how much history we experienced in Berlin in one afternoon.  I saw historical sites I have read about since I was in 5th grade, and that is truly an amazing experience.

The next morning, we caught an early train to Dresden for a guided tour of the city (you probably got psyched out by the title of this blog post thinking I would only be talking about Berlin).  Dresden was extremely pretty, but, much like Berlin, the effects of World War II are still very apparent with cranes everywhere and tasteful monuments spread throughout the city.  Of course, Dresden was almost completely destroyed by the Allies during the war in a highly controversial air-raid.  The attack on Dresden was controversial because at the time during the war when it was bombed the city held little strategic value to the Allies.  The Allies simply carried out the attack to deflate the morale of the German people by destroying arguably their most beautiful town.  I actually feel something of a connection to this piece of WWII history because we played a touching piece in high school band that commemorated this unnecessary attack and memorialized its victims.

On Wednesday morning, we visited Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp with our trusty Scottish tour guide Ryan.  This was really a very sobering visit for me.  To see firsthand the site where countless atrocities were committed against fellow human beings is an almost indescribable feeling.  Thinking about what those prisoners experienced-the fear, hopelessness, pain, and exhaustion-is difficult and heavy on the mind.  But I think that is exactly how visiting Sachsenhausen is supposed to feel.  It is a reminder that we as humans are capable of doing truly terrible things to each other, and humanity should never let something like that happen ever again.  Following the Sachsenhausen visit, we returned to Berlin to do whatever we wanted.  Many of us went to find the "best" currywurst in the city.  This currywurst place was under some train tracks outside of a subway station.  In haste, I picked out the closest currywurst stand under the train tracks which actually wasn't the supposed best currywurst restaurant in Berlin (oops).  Instead, I had the currywurst from the currywurst place next to the best currywurst place in Berlin, which is basically just as good.  After lunch, I went to Museum Island to explore a couple of the famous museums on my own.  First I saw the Neues Museum which had thousands of ancient Egyptian artifacts, most notably being the bust of Nefertiti ("the most beautiful woman in Berlin").  I also briefly toured the Pergamon Museum as well, seeing many of the Middle Eastern art and artifacts it had to offer.  I walked around downtown Berlin to see more of the city-city before heading back to the hotel to meet up with a few people for the "ALTERNATIVE 666 PUB CRAWL!!"  This pub crawl was super fun, and despite the name was not led by Satanists.  We went to some of the more local bars usually not frequented by tourists before ending up at a really crappy club that I could've done without.

Thursday was the Bioscience-y day, featuring a visit to the Museum for the History of Medicine, a meeting with a couple of medical students at the Charite, and finally a visit to the cool-looking Otto Bock Science Center.  The most interesting part was definitely the preserved specimens at the Museum for the History of Medicine.  One of the specimens was a 20 kg colon that came from a guy who had a disorder with his digestive system where he basically couldn't poop.  He lived for like 30 years and walked around with that thing. Amazing.  With that in mind, let me tell you about the awesome Moroccan dinner we had at Kasbah.  These large group dinners we have with the AIB have been one of my favorite parts of the trip because everything is paid for, there's lots of laughs, and we always get great food.  After dinner, some of us went to a bar close to our hotel that was probably the nicest bar I've ever been to in my limited bar-going days.  The drinks were about 8 euros each, but we got these nice couches all to ourselves, the bartender gave us free peanuts, and the bathrooms were impeccable.  10/10 would go again.

For our last day in Berlin, we went to Hohenschonhausen which was used as a prison for both the SS and the Stasi.  I suppose it was fairly interesting, but the whole museum had a very propaganda-y feel to it.  I had a hard time putting my finger on it, but I just felt slightly unnerved by the way they presented everything, especially this video they showed us at the beginning of the tour.  It played like a bad, early-2000s documentary you can find on the History Channel at 2 am between infomercials.

Regardless,  Berlin, self-described as "poor yet sexy,"  was a fantastic city that I greatly enjoyed for the week.  Through the ups and downs, I learned a lot about German history, ate some good food, and walked my ass off.  Next stop:  Prague.