Biosciences Bonn: BRRlin || February 26, 2018

(credits to Izzie for the post title)

Since my host dad used to work in Berlin, they still own his old flat there and visit whenever they have the chance. A while back, they told us about it and said we could stay there for a weekend if we wanted. I was really honoured by this because they said they didn't offer this to all of their past host kids, but we seemed very responsible and they trusted us. So obviously, we said yes, picked a date, and here we are!

First off, here are a few things I learned over the weekend:

Berlin is pregnant with history (geschichtsträchtig) and Sandeman's is a consistently good touring service.
You can never have too many snack foods (especially when for dinner you and your friends simply raid a grocery store and share your collective selections).
Dressing for the cold is an essential skill. I still have not acquired said essential skill.
Overnight trains are better than overnight busses. But a stable, non moving bed tops them both.
It takes approximately one day in Berlin to upgrade my minor, but ever-present congestion into a full blown sinus crisis.

And here's what I did to learn them:

To get to Berlin we took an overnight flixbus and although it wasn't really ideal, it was cheap and decently comfortable. It was pretty empty when we got on, so we all ended up claiming two seats which really helped with the sleep quality. It stoped often throughout the night, probably every couple of hours or so, and each one brought more people so we didn't all get to keep our comfortable positions but they were quite nice while they lasted. We arrived around 8 in the morning and after dropping off our stuff at the flat, we started our Berlin visit with a free walking tour. The meeting point was the Brandenburg gate, and even though we got off the S-Bahn at the stop named so, I was not expecting to see such a spectacular sight right out of the station. We literally walked up the steps from the underground line and then BAM there it was! After a round of photos we joined the group and went on our first tour led by Georgia, a really interesting woman from Scotland. She took us to a lot of the tourist-sites-to-see all in a couple of hours--Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Checkpoint Charlie, a small portion of the Berlin Wall, the site of Hitler's bunker/suicide location, past the Konzerthaus, and finally we ended in Bebelplatz. After the tour we wandered for a while in search of food and after a few failed attempts we ended up at a delicious burger place under the Fernsehturm. Highly recommend! After lunch we explored museum island, took some photos with a group of spontaneous Italians, and ended up in the DHM aka German history museum. I was a little bummed that everyone wanted to go to it as I was more interested in a nearby art gallery, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was not only a really great museum with all sorts of artifacts and information spanning all time periods, but it also had plenty of art pieces for me to enjoy. We stayed at the museum until closing and then embraced the cold once again to wander the city. Eventually we picked up a Rewe dinner and made our way back to the flat where we just talked and enjoyed each other's company (I mean, we kind of had to. There was no wifi!) for the rest of the night.

Earlier I said we went on our first tour led by Georgia, because on Sunday we took another. This time it was a tour of Sachsenhausen, a former concentration camp located about an hour away from Berlin. We didn't decide to do this until Saturday night, but I'm very glad that we did. I'm not going to discuss it too much, but it was a humbling experience to say the least. Once we got back from Sachsenhausen, we took a tour of the Reichstag dome. The dome is made of glass has a spiral walkway wrapping along the inside so that you can see a panoramic view of the city as you ascend. It also had a really great audio guide that could sense where you were along the path and would give you a narrative based on what city checkpoints were in front of you. If you weren't interested in the topic it was discussing, you could just continue along the path until you hit the next location sensor and it would move on. Coolest audio guide ever! Following that we went to the east side gallery, which is the part of the wall that stands covered in graffiti. This was quite possibly my favorite thing we did, even though we were just walking along it. There were so many beautiful, weird, retrospective, bright, [insert literally any adjective here] art pieces--not exactly cohesive, yet all to instill hope for a better future. After that we enjoyed a nice dinner, packed up our stuff, and took an overnight train back to Bonn. We arrived around 8:30 am at which point I immediately went to Nicky's house for a morning run, took a shower, and went to class. What a way to start the week! That's about it for Berlin, although I feel like there was so much more to do that we didn't have the time for. Hopefully one day, I'll return.

Photo Dump: