Willkommen in Berlin!
- Cori
- Sep 23, 2017
- 5 min read
(Get ready for a long one!)
What a weekend!!! This past Monday some friends and I decided to plan a last minute trip to Berlin for two days. What started off as a good idea turned into a hilariously poorly executed trip that ended up being absolutely amazing! It originally started with four of us buying tickets, and ended up with only two of us being able to get them and booking basically the last hostel available in Berlin. Instead of paying more money to rebook the tickets so that we all could go, my friend Will and I decided to just head over and give the others a list of things to do when they go later.
We left Thursday morning and took the train from Vienna to Bratislava, Slovakia. Then ubered to the airport from the train station, and took the hour flight to Berlin. We got to our Hostel (St. Christopher’s Inn Berlin Hostel) around 5pm and spent the rest of the evening checking out some famous sites in the evening light. We got to the Brandenburg Gate, Holocaust Museum and Reichstag Building for a quick view, and then relaxed from a full day of travel. Our roommates in the Hostel were a group of 5 or so younger students from Australia who had been traveling around Europe for four months already, and still had two more to go! They were loud, messy and snored but overall a really interesting group of people...
The next day (Friday) was a beautifully sunny HOT day where we took the Hop-on-Hop-off bus tour (cheesy I know but it was a great deal to see all the sites with a listening tour). We would take it around and get off when we saw something interesting. Starting off we visited the Berlin Cathedral on Museum Island. This cathedral was gorgeous inside and out, and we ended up paying to go inside and up to the top of the dome to get a 360-degree view of the city. We ended up missing two of our busses to hang out with a street performer who captured the people around him with bubbles! It is at times like this where you have to enjoy the simpler things in life! Seriously, we played with bubbles for over 20 minutes. Totally worth it! We then visited the Brandenburg Gate again, but this time in daylight. We got giant pretzels and soft-serve and really took in the view. I didn't trust giving my pretzel to anyone to hold while I was getting my picture taken (you can clearly see some of it in my hand)... It was at this time that we realized that the 2017 Berlin Marathon was going on that weekend, which really explained why so much of the city was blocked off and the large amount of people. The day before we booked a tour for the Reichstag Building Dome so we headed to that next. It is a very modern metal and glass dome on top of the very old Reichstag Building. The glass dome has a double spiral ramp going up to the top, along with a mirrored center to reflect light inside. Next on our list was to visit the Victory Column in the center of the Tiergarten. On top of the column is a bronze sculpture of Viktoria, the Roman goddess of Victory. This was another tall tower of stairs that we crawled to the top of to get another aerial view of the city. From here we could see some of the Marathon's path, such as the start (blue banners) and finish (Brandenburg Gate). Then for a while we got back onto the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus but quickly made a detour because we saw a sign for a style of Kebap that I was told to try. It was more than worth it and I got some Baklava to go with it. Middle Eastern food is extremely popular in Europe since it is obviously so close, and I can't get enough of it! We finished off the day with a visit to the Berlin Wall, or more specifically the East Gallery, which is the longest and oldest surviving part of the Berlin Wall. It was covered with art and stories of people who tried to cross the wall during the war. By the time we got back to our hostel, I was confident that when I took off my shoes, my feet would be bleeding. Our legs were cramping, our toes were blistered, and we had just enough energy to grab a drink and some dinner, and then pass out for the rest of the night.
For our last day we got up early to go to the TV Tower for our reserved breakfast on the revolving restaurant at the top. It was quite expensive, but to me it was well worth the money because of the beautiful view of the city and the amazing food we got. We both got cappuccinos and a dish of fruits, smoked salmon and meats, different cheeses, marinated mini shrimp, a basket of different bread rolls, and a glass of champagne. We really went all out for our last day!!!! I died a little: basically all my favorite foods and drinks in one meal... To finish up our trip before our flight back home we visited the Berlin Zoo! If you know me, then you already know that I can easily spend a whole day at the zoo, so fitting in "the most species-rich zoo in the world" into three hours was tough, but we managed to visit about 90% of all the animals! I was having the time of my life looking and talking to all the animals, and I'm very impressed that Will didn't drag me away from any of the enclosures...
After we finished at the zoo, we took the train to the airport, flew back to Bratislava, ubered to the train station, and took that train back to Vienna: another 5 hours of travel... But now I'm back in my apartment resting my aching feet and typing this up.
This quick (but action packed) trip to Berlin really put me in perspective about how real history is. That may be a weird statement, but It is one thing learning about the world's history in a textbook in High School, but a completely different story actually visiting the places you learn about. All of the places we visited in this trip, we learned about through tours and readings, and I made so many connections to my history classes back in high school. World War II really hit the city of Berlin hard because over 70% of the city was destroyed by the end of the war. We could even see that as we visited now: the outskirts of the city were still crumbled and desolate because all the repair efforts went into the center of the city. At first I was surprised about how somewhat unkempt the city was, but not even 70 years ago most of the city didn't exist. Overall, visiting Berlin really opened my eyes about European History and again, how absolute it is.
I highly suggest those history-buffs out there to someday visit this city because it is so rich and full of important information!
And don't forget to visit the Gallery section of my blog because I post videos there (I can't upload them onto blog posts boo) and extra photos so I don't crowd up the blog post.
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