Berlino

My first trip was to the amazing city of Berlino! I believe I was here once as a child with the fam and my Dad’s good German friend Matt, but I couldn’t tell you a year. This time I was being shown around by another German friend I met here at CBS named Lucas. When we first decided to make the trip it was a crew of around 6, we kept adding people until the crew grew to 12! We were taking Germany by storm. We booked a hostel (Meininger Berlin) that was just a 10 minute walk to most sights. It was my first experience in a hostel and it was interesting to say the least. The boys were responsible for booking 2 private rooms of 6. Well when we got there, we found out that something had gone wrong with the reservation (Never trusting the boys again!) and we were split up in groups of 5, 4, and 3. The five girls decided to stick together and I opened the door to our room full of excitement yelling “This is nice!” and flicked on the lights. Suddenly a middle aged man shot up from the top bunk. We were all surprised to say the least. In the end he was a nice man and a perfectly fine roomie but it was not something any of us were used to!

Day one consisted of the famous TV tower (which is completely overrated) and Reichstag the German Parliament Building. We paid 12 euro for the TV tower and it was very pretty but we didn’t know what anything was yet! We had some time to kill before our appointment to tour Reichstag (free but you must make a reservation) so we went to the Berlin Cathedral. It’s so beautiful and huge. You are actually allowed to take the stairs all the way to the top of the dome and go outside to see the spectacular view. It was totally worth 4 euro. Next was the Brandenburg Gate. It was completely invaded by tourist but still awesome to see. (It is underratedly beautiful at night so swing by after the sun sets as well). I passed by the Mercedes-Benz Showroom on the way so I just had to take a picture for Dad. Only one shop over was Mom’s work… STARBUCKS! Princess Liz was so happy she finally got her Starbucks (we don’t have it in Copenhagen, believe it or not). Finally it was time for our tour of Reichstag which has a modernly designed large glass dome that has a 360 degree view of the city. Upon entry you are given a headset and you walk the ramp circling the dome while a guide explains in detail what each building is. (I suggest you do this first thing in berlin so you get a background of the whole city and IT’S FREE!). By then it was dinner time and we were all staving, grumpy and cold. Lucas suggested an Italian chain that is big in Europe but was actually really good and cheap! We got home rested our feet and went out to Weekend, A rooftop bar. It was really cool to look over the city at night!

Day two was just as packed as day one. We woke up bright and early to catch our walking tour at 10am. Well let’s just say we didn’t make it cause of a few stragglers. We decided to do it on our own. We went to the Topography of Terror which was very interesting, but I have to admit the Holocaust Museum in LA is better. It’s free entry so it’s definitely still worth going. We walked to checkpoint Charlie the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. Then we caught the metro (which is really confusing in berlin, thank god for Lucas!) to the East Side Gallery. The walls are covered in bright works of art and of course we had a blast taking tons of photos. Everyone was super tired, except me of course, so most went home. Lucas, Brody, Matt and I decided to go to the New Synagogue and the flea market. I got my first Currywurst there. It was delish! When we got back to the hostel everyone was already knocked out from a long day.

Since we had seen all the sights we wanted to we decided to take Sunday easy. We slept till 12 and went to this HUGE flea market down the street from our hostel (Flohmarkt am Mauerpark). It was so cute. Liz and I shared a banana and Nutella crepe and walked the long row for 2 hours. We found headbands hand made in Berlin at the very end of the row, perfect for our return to freezing Copenhagen. After we went to Deutscher Dom, which wasn’t really worth it because everything is in German. Across the street is the real gem, the largest chocolatier in the world! Fassbender Rausch had some amazing gourmet chocolates that you would never see in See’s (Sorry Evan!). For our last supper we decided to go all out, German Beer Hall style! We walked to Hofbreau Munchen and got our traditional German meals: pretzels, schnitzel, potato dumplings and of course, beer!

Our weekend had come to an end and we were all exhausted. Our flight was at 6am the next morning so we were up and ready to go at 4am. Everyone had passed out before the airplane’s doors closed.

Auf Wiedersehen und gute Nacht!