Berlin

Guten Tag!

After spending an amazing week in Greece, I had the opportunity to see Berlin for a couple of days! I was really interested to see another country and how different Germany was going to be. To be honest, I had no idea what to do when I first got to Berlin haha. I knew about the Berlin Wall and there is plenty of history in the city, most notably from WWII, but I did not know any of the famous sites to see or where to really go. So the first thing I did when I got to Berlin was get a city map. On this city map there was an advertisement for free walking tours around the city that saw all of the important sites so I knew that I had to check this out. I came in later in the night so after getting the map I had to find my way to my hostel which was definitely nowhere near the airport haha. I got on a train and I honestly had no idea what stop I had to get off of to get to my hostel so I got off at the only part of the city that I had heard of before, Alexanderplatz (I really don't know how I even heard of this place, but I knew that it was near the center of the city).

The Victory Column

Once I got off at this station, I began to attempt and decipher the metro system of Berlin, (which I became pretty good at actually) although at this time I had no idea what train to get on or where to go. So I began to make sense of the metro layout on my city map and I finally found a train that could take me closer to my hostel. When I got off at the nearest stop it was about a 20 minute walk or so through some darker streets in the city. At this point I actually started to feel a bit nervous, probably one of the more nervous times I've been abroad, just because I was by myself and it was around midnight in the outer streets of Berlin. But it was fine and I ended up finally finding my hostel. The hostel was really nice and there were a lot of people there so that was cool. The next day I tried to meet up with the tour and when I got to the meeting spot, nobody was there, so there wasn't much else for me to do other than go back to the hostel and ask them for suggestions haha. They pointed out a few cool sites like the Tiergarten and a spot in the city where remains from the Berlin Wall were supposed to be. So when I got to the Tiergarten it was really nice. It's just a huge park area thats super nice on a good day and it was cool to walk through. After that I went to where I thought was supposed to be the remains of the Berlin Wall but instead it was like this massive gathering of people and they were all just hanging out in this massive park area and I kept asking myself where the remains of this Berlin Wall were. I actually did not end up finding it there and I spent the rest of the day walking around the city and trying some pretty awesome kebab and beer (part of the reason why I came to Berlin). That pretty much consisted of my first day in Berlin and although I didn't get to see as much as I wanted to it was still pretty cool to just walk around wherever I wanted and relax.

The Berliner Dom and The Fernsehturm

The next day was definitely more eventful haha. I woke up earlier and when I went to the spot where this free walking tour was supposed to start (hoping to catch it this time) I noticed some other people walking around the area too. They were standing in the spot looking really confused and when I walked up to the group they thought that I was the tour guide haha. When I told them that I wasn't (afraid of what would happen if I pretended that I was) we heard someone point out to where the group was supposed to meet. So we were finally able to meet with our guide and from there we went to the main meeting area on the other side of the city where the tour actually started. It's hard to talk about everything that we saw but I can say that the tour was definitely awesome. It was so informational and interesting and the tour guide was a really cool guy. We saw all of the main sites that Berlin had to offer and we got a nice bit of history and explanation as to what each site was about. It was really neat and, of course, there was a lot of Nazi and Communist history here. Some of the things we saw just blew me away. To think I was standing right where Hitler assembled his Nazi Army and conducted all of his horrible tactics was pretty crazy. The tour lasted about 3 and a half hours and after it, the guide recommended a few places for me to go (including a good kebab spot of course).

One of my favorite paintings on the East Side Gallery

So I went to see some of these places and the first place I saw was the East Side Gallery. This was really neat. It is basically the largest open air gallery in the world, consisting of around 100 paintings along the side of the Berlin Wall and it is really cool. There is a ton of really cool artwork that each represents some kind of message. I really enjoyed my time looking at this gallery. After seeing this I went to check out an exhibit called the Topography of Terror which basically documents the history of Berlin and Germany during Hitler's reign. It was really interesting and there was a lot of information here, as well as another section of the Berlin Wall that was still standing. After seeing this exhibit I went to check out the Berlin Wall Memorial in the North side of town. This was definitely an emotional memorial. It basically contained a standing exhibit of how the wall was set up. There was an inner wall and an outer wall with a space in between the two called the "death strip." In this area now there is a memorial for the people who died trying to get across this strip and over the wall into West Berlin where freedom existed. There were many people here that died trying to cross the strip, as there were numerous booby traps and watchtowers with guards who were authorized to shoot at anyone attempting to cross the strip and climb the wall.

The Death Strip

It was pretty mind-blowing to stand there in the area of the death strip and think to myself "wow, if i had been standing here 22 years ago I would have definitely been dead." So after that more depressing and heavy part of the city, I basically just headed back to the hostel and had an early night since I had a fairly early flight the next day to Sweden, and after an early wake up due to my first bad hostel experience, (a man in my dorm was yelling in his sleep) I was ready to start the day early and head to the airport (which I barely made it to because of a fire on the train tracks for the first scheduled train) and I was on my way to Sweden! Overall, Berlin was a pretty awesome city. There is a ton of interesting history and nearly all of the main buildings were pretty much rebuilt because of all of the bombing that took place during the war. There is a lot of intense history here and it makes you think about things, but it's good. It was cool to experience the different parts of the city and I definitely learned a lot of stuff about the war that I didn't know before when I was here. I would certainly recommend making a trip here. Next stop Sweden!

Auf Wiedersehen!