Brrrlin

So I went to Berlin for spring break! (Oxymoron, I know). Considering our spring break is in the middle of February, it was kind of a bad idea... but I still had a great time of course.

The first sight we saw was the Riechstag. We tried to go in, but apparently you need a reservation, so that did not work out.

This is right next to the Brandenburg Gate:

And the Holocaust Memorial:

 

..which was kind of weird because it has not been said what it is supposed to represent because it is left up to your own interpretation.

We went to the Pergamon Museum, which I would HIGHLY recommend. You can see the Gates of Ishtar! (To be fair, I didn't know what they were before I went, but apparently they are pretty famous, and they were cool regardless.)

I also went to the Jewish Museum which I thought was ehh, kinda just sad and creepy, which is to be expected. Also went to Checkpoint Charlie, (one of the famous checkpoints in the wall between east and west Berlin during the Cold War) and the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which was really cool! The first floor was actually kind of overwhelming, because everything is really cluttered together, but if you dig through it there is some really interesting stuff.

My favorite thing in Berlin, however, was the East Side Gallery. It is the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall that is still standing. It is covered with different murals, and the art gets constantly redone.

Berlin was REALLYYY cold though. Literally the coldest I've ever been, and Boston winters aren't tropical. It was kind of hard to enjoy the sightseeing while trying to limit time spent outside or walking outside to a bare minimum. Also - I HATE THE S-BAHN (Berlin's public transportation) because the stations are not entirely enclosed, and that is just plainly inhumane when it is as cold as it is in Berlin.


Other random tidbits about Berlin:

• The bread is amazingggggggg!! Something I hadn't heard about before going, but it was noticeably better bread than in the UK.
• They have large portion sizes in restaurants for Europe! Yay! (One thing I miss as an American..)
• The beer was pretty good
• German is sooooo different than English. I've been to Spanish, Italian, and French speaking countries, and even when you don't speak the language, you can try to pronounce something, and even though it is incorrect, it is somewhat close. In Berlin, it was just impossible. We have different sounds for some of the same letters, and they have some letters that we don't even have. It was kind of unsettling to know that I couldn't even attempt to speak to someone if I had to.