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.

Portobello Market Review

Portobello Market is one of the better markets I've been to in London (there are a lot).

A lot of leather satchels, vintage jewelry, a section with food, and some other miscellaneous goods. It is really unbelievable how far the market spans down Portobello Road. I walked down for an hour and a half or so at a relatively faster browsing pace, and still only made it to what seemed to be the first third of it, at which point I turned around because I was worn out. If I have time I want to try to go back.

Hierarchy of London Markets:

1) Sunday Up Market

2) Portobello

3) Camden

4) Burrow

Note: Spitalfield and Burrow posts to come soon

The Natural History Museum is amazing!!!

I only have 3 weekends left in London (4 weeks of my program, but I am going away for one of the weekends to Paris), so I am starting to try to spend a lot of time trying things I haven't done yet and spending as little time in my room as possible, especially because it is so hard to do so during the week after I get home from work. So yesterday, Kat and I wanted to do something touristy, but were still relatively exhausted from our action packed Saturday, so we didn't want to do anything wild. We decided to go to the Natural History Museum because neither of us had been, it is on our street, and it is free (as are almost all museums/art galleries in London). It completely exceeded our non-existent expectations!! I loved it! And we only got to spend an hour there, so I definitely want to go back to check out the exhibits we skipped over.

The building is really beautiful:

And this is the inside:

There is an amaaaaAAaazing dinosaur exhibit! I didn't realize how into dinosaurs I am until this trip.

I thought this was funny, look at those arms!! The bio on this dino said his arms were too short to reach his mouth :( how sad! And he only had two fingers! :(

 Sidenote: A T-Rex is so heavy that if it were running and it fell over onto its side, it would die from its own body weight. #whydinosaursareextinct

There was an (almost) life size animated and surround sound T-Rex!

The other exhibit we went to was of mammals. The replicas were so realistic, I loved it.

:)

South Kensington, London

I have become so so sick of South Ken. It's too polished and boring. Aside from other students on my program, I rarely cross paths with people my age. It's predominately middle aged people and families, the stores and restaurants are definitely catered towards that. But, I think the main reason why I am sick of it is I have gotten into a routine and only pass the same streets on the way to class and to the tube to get to work, so - I decided to wander around an area a few blocks from where I live so I could see more of the area.

South Ken:

St. Patrick's Day Parade in London

In London, they hold the St. Patrick's Day Parade the weekend before St. Patrick's Day, which was Sunday, March 13 in this case. I just stopped by for an hour or so, it was pretty interesting, relatively tame though.

There were definitely a lot of bagpipers

I could have done with more step dancers :/

This is my corner pub, all dolled up for the festivities:

You would think because of the proximity to Ireland that St. Patrick's Day would be a bigger deal in the UK, but no one seemed to care or even remember. It was definitely a tame and not too festive day.

The Eagle Premier

I was invited to see The Eagle's premier in London last week (because I work at Universal). The movie was pretty good, but I got to walk on a red carpet!! Whee!! It was surprisingly plush and comfortable to walk on.

Also, I saw Channing Tatum:

 

And, although I wanted to pretend I was famous and it wasn't a big deal to be walking on a red carpet, I decided I might as well take a couple pictures. Here's my roomie Cady :)

(and Channing Tatum behind her, by the railing)

And my boss sent me this link today:

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/movies/The+Eagle+Premiere-9918.html

You can see me lurking in the background around 4:50 ;)

Bristol, UK

So, the two days following my trip to Portugal, were my two finals. I was finished by 1 pm on Tuesday, February 15, and then a few hours later, my roommate Kat and I went off to Bristol. It takes about two and a half hours by bus. We were visiting Kat's best friend from BU's best friend from high school who moved to Bristol upon graduation. Soozie was an excellent host, and gathered up a bunch of her friends from uni to show us a good time. This was one of my favorite trips of the semester because it was really nice to experience a day in the life of a bunch of Brits our age, and they were all really cool and even though I've never seen the show, I felt like I was living an episode of Skins. (Since I go to class exclusively with students from the Boston University program, I unfortunately have not had as much exposure to British uni students as I would have liked...)

Here are some pictures from my trip:

Soozie's place:

Kat and I got breakfast in this pub:

Also, Banksy is from Bristol. This is unfortunately the only picture I got of any of Banksy's work:

 All in all, Kat and I had an amazing time in Bristol with Soozie and her friends. I don't know if I would necessarily recommend visiting Bristol out of the cities in the UK to visit simply because if I didn't know someone from there I would have had no idea what to do. When Kat and I first got in, we had an hour or two to kill and we pulled out Kat's UK guide book and after reading about Bristol we just stared at each other blankly and decided to find a cafe to hang out in instead.