Berlin

Day 1 (Friday)

Our flight from Stockholm got in fairly late, so Jacob, Stuart, and Bobby checked into their hostel right away. We got some recommendations about restaurants / bars to check out, so after Leah & I checked into the hotel, we went to Schwarz Café. It was a very cool, local café that was open 24/7. Apparently it gets very crowded in the early morning, when hotel staff and bartenders come off the night shift. We all ordered beer and sat and talked for a few hours. It was an older building with lots of great artwork on the walls and funky light fixtures on the ceiling. By 2am, we decided to head to bed, since we would be doing a lot of sight seeing the next day.

Day 2 (Saturday)

Leah & I woke up early and ordered room service, a luxury that we had been looking forward to for a while. After meeting up with Bobby, Stuart and Jacob, we headed to the Brandonberg Gate. It was filled with tourists, but since it was still pretty early, we got a good view of the gate and took lots of pictures. We then walked over to the Reichstag, the German parliament. Although we waited in line for about 1.5 hours, it was well worth it. The top of the building is a giant modern glass dome, a striking contrast to the rest of the building, which is old and beautifully preserved. There were great 365º views of the city, which again elicited tons of picture-taking. After the parliament, we wandered the city for a while, stopping at an Italian restaurant that was similar to Fire & Ice. Although it wasn’t traditional German cuisine, it was still very good. We then walked to Checkpoint Charlie, the point between East and West Berlin. The actual checkpoint is now housed in a museum, which you have to pay to get into, so we didn’t see it. But we saw some remains of the Berlin Wall which are actually all around the city. We also went to an open-air memorial called “Topography of Terror”, which looked at the war from the point of view of some Nazi soldiers. There were some terrifying but interesting pictures that gave me a new insight on the war. We then walked back towards the Brandonberg Gate and saw the Soviet War Memorial with the sunset as the backdrop. For dinner, we took another recommendation from the hostel receptionist, a restaurant called Quelle. It was a hole in the wall place under the subway, but inside was fantastic. Although very tiny, it was packed with people, clearly a popular hang out for regulars. A traveling band (a violin player, a bass player, and an accordion player) entered and played a few songs. We all got traditional (very heavy) German food, washed down with traditional (very good) beer. After dinner, we headed to The House of 100 Beers, where we each got a different brand of beer. Stuart got “Samichlaus Bier: the strongest lager beer in the world”. It was disgusting. By the time we were done with our drinks, it was again 2am, so we walked home and fell right asleep.

Day 3 (Sunday)

We woke up early again in order to see the rest of the sights of the city. We walked down the street from our hotel and saw a church that had been bombed during the war. The stained glass windows were blown out and the middle section was the only one left standing. However, they had built models of what the old building parts looked like and within the models, they had inserted the pieces of stained glass. There was also a beautiful mosaic that had been preserved, something I found odd yet fantastic. We hopped on the bus to go to the Gemäldegalerie, an art gallery on the outskirts of the city. However, after a while we realized that we were going the wrong way (completely my fault). So we reversed our direction and soon ended up at the gallery. It was a very interesting building – extremely large rooms, lots of light, very modern – but the art was less than thrilling. There were a lot of paintings of the Holy Family, which you can only see so much of. We were hungry from all the museum wandering, so we went to Kuchen Kaiser, a restaurant in a somewhat residential area that claimed to be the emperor of cakes. We got a light lunch to ensure we had room for cake. We all got different kinds and shared them…and they were all delicious. Having a few hours before we had to leave for the airport, we killed time with a carriage ride around the Brandonberg Gate area, a very pleasant but very touristy activity. We then had to head back to the hotel, pick up our bags, and head to the airport. It was an action-packed but very fun and cultural weekend.