Week 12 - Berlin

This weekend was the last unplanned travel weekend of the trip, so I debated for a while where I wanted to go.  We waited until the very last minute to book the trip because everything has been so busy, so going to another country was going to be super expensive.  We ended up deciding on going to Berlin.  I was really excited about this because I have been living in Germany for three months and haven't been to the capital.

So, we got in late Friday night and just hung out in the hostel.  Then, Saturday was packed full of running around Berlin seeing monuments.  Something about Berlin - it's really spread out.  So when I describe everything we did, please be impressed by how much we fit into one day.  We started at the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag Building.  Then we walked through the Tiergarten, the largest and oldest park in Berlin, and climbed the Victory Column to get an aerial view of Berlin.  Next, we saw the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a Holocaust memorial with 2,711 concrete columns of various depths forming a labyrinth of sorts.  Right across from this memorial, we ate a Berlin-typical food, curry wurst.  After re-energizing ourselves with curry wurst and beer, we saw Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall Memorial.  Seeing all of these monuments was really interesting and helped me better understand Germany as a country and it's divided past of East and West.  Later, we went to a Quentin Tarantino themed bar, which was really cool!  For dinner, we went to a sketchy part of Berlin to wait in a huge line for this little burger stand that supposedly has the best burgers in Germany.  Worth it.  They were so good.  To end the night, we went to Club Matrix around the corner to experience a little of the nightlife of Berlin.

Sunday morning, Sarahi and I went to Palm Sunday mass in this big, circular church.  Then we met up with everyone else for some delicious Vietnamese street food and more sightseeing.  We went to Museum Island and visited the Pergamon and Neues museums, displaying Persian and Egyptian antiquities, respectively.  Both were interesting!  Later, we went down to the East Side Gallery, a conserved, graffiti-covered portion of the Berlin wall.  The most famous part is the Socialist Fraternal Kiss, captioned "My God, help me to survive this deadly love."  Finally, we went to the airport to wait for our flight.  Overall, Berlin was a super cool city.  It has a ton of history and museums and monuments, but it's also super diverse and trendy.  It was a fun weekend!