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This is Danny writing this one...I'm going to talk about the trip and Laura is going to write a separate blog about the interesting history that we learned. We went on a walking tour, where we learned so much about Berlin's history that we think a separate blog should be devoted to just that.
We were planning on leaving Friday evening and arriving Saturday morning, so we went to the train station in Metz Friday morning before our classes to check out the train reservations to get to Berlin. To make a long story short...the ticket person didn't speak much English and didn't understand our railpass, so she was probably not looking at the right information on her computer or didn't know how to enter. The available reservations that she had were not suitable for us, so after buying a reservation to Luxemburg for 20 euros (thinking we'd go there at least if nothing else worked, because it seemed everything gets booked) we came back to school. After looking on the train websites and online schedules, we noticed that we could get to Berlin on trains that didn't require reservations and make it back as well. (I guess that wasn't really a short story).
After several connecting overnight trains, we made it to Berlin around 9:00 am Saturday. We checked into our hostel-which was actually very clean and new, and headed out to get some food. Doner Kebabs are everywhere here...I had a bunch during my Oxford trip too, so I got one and Laura got a bratwurst-also all over Berlin in little stands on the streets. We then headed to the Brandenburg Gate-Berlin's city icon, where we were looking for the start of our free tour-organized by a company that hosts free tours in major European cities (we will check them out in Munich as well). We had a very energetic, starving, poor artist-he's from Vermont, went to Columbia and majored in Physics and Math, and then after graduating and wasting his parents money decided to move out to Berlin to pursue his love for contemporary dancing...Anyways, he was very good, and we got to learn a lot about the rise of Berlin, why the Berlin Wall was created and torn down, all about Hitler, and other things that hopefully Laura will write about.
The tour's highlights were the courtyard of the Brandenburg Gate - where the US embassy, French embassy, and famous Hotel Adlon-where Michael Jackson dangled his baby. Nearby, we learned about the Reichstag-where we visited this glass and mirred dome on Sunday. We then headed to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews. This was only constructed in 2005, so it is fairly new. It's a huge area of rising stone rectangular tombstone looking things. Our guide said there was no definitive meaning for the design of the memorial and it should be left up to the viewer. With my artistic ability I clearly was able to understand that the stones begin level with the ground and get larger as you move towards the center of the area signifying that racism is always present and that the Nazi's escalated this until the situation was so large (the stones are larger than you), and that it is easy to get lost in the grid of stones and separated from others signifying how families were separated...I cleary knew all of that before our guide told us these common beliefs...either way it was still very interesting to see. Next we headed towards the Communist luxury apartments-yes luxury apartments for a society of "equals" and we learned here that Hitler's bunker where he killed himself was used to lie beneath the parking lot that we stoop upon-suiting to not have a special memorial for such an evil person. Next we moved on to the Nazi Airforce headquarters, which had an interesting socialist propaganda mural painted on the side and a mosaic fountain showing a photograph of a demonstration that occurred in front of it. The building was supposed to show the plain fascist architecture that the Nazi's planned on changing the city into. From here we headed towards the remains of the Berlin Wall and Charlie's Checkpoint, where the US looked onto East Germany and a famous standoff occured, it is now a very touristy area where you can get your picture taken with fake guards and your passport stamped - (Laura has some good stories about this place). We had a quick stop at Scholotski's deli-at first I was kind of upset that they took us to an American restaurant, but after the free refills of ICEd coke I was very happy with the decision. We then headed towards a square across from the prestigious, old university in Berlin, that housed an old church, library, and opera house built by Frederick the Great. We then headed to the museum island, where we sat down and heard the guide's very long, but interesting spiel on how the Berlin Wall came down.
I skipped a lot of description about the places...leaving that up to Laura - too bad for her. Along with the company that hosted the tour, they also put on a pub crawl. We decided to check this out that night. For 11 euros - 1 euro off for going to the tour, hence the pictures of our stamped forarms - we got free entrance into about 5 clubs/bars, free beer for the first hourish, and some free vodka/orange juice shots throughout the night. The pubcrawl started out well, besides the rain...we started at this very weird junkyard-like bar-thing. It had a few outdoor bars situated between spray painted random junk, including a section of a helicopter, trailer, and bus. We then headed to a small bar (along the way we saw several hookers out on the streets in their high healed boots and short skirts). We stole the mug that we got our beer in, this may be a trend that I keep up. The next place had a fair sized dance floor that we had fun at, but by the time we got to the next place we were a little tired from the day's walking, lack of sleep on the trains the night before, and the drinking. We made it to the last place- which was supposed to have 4 floors, but we only saw 1, and after trying to dance through 2-3 songs of techno/electronic/european music w/ crazy raving young Europeans we decided to hop on the metro back to the hostel.
The next day we decided to take the later train, around 6pm, so that we could check out some the places our tour passed by. We first went to the Reichstag, and waited in line for about an hour to be able to go inside and climb up the glass dome. This was very different b/c the old building built some time in the 1800's had a modern glass structure protruding from the top that was completed in the late 1990's. The tower made of mirrors in the center is supposed to allow the people to view the actions of the government in order below and the government to be able to look up and see who they are serving. After several pictures of this and the city below, we ventured out to see the wall and the death trap memorial that we learned of from our guide. Laura will talk about the death trap hopefully. After going to the wrong section of the remaining wall-far east side of the city-we decided we didn't have enough time to make it to the area we set out for, but we got to see the more decorated (graffitied) wall.
We headed back to the hostel to get our bags, last 1 euro gelato (best price we've seen), and head on back. I was unaware that Laura really wanted to get a picture of herself standing on one side of old East and West Berlin (we saw near the Reichstag a plaque on the ground that marked the location of the old wall), so after not thinking we could make it there in time, I-"Mr. Compass", figured out how to get there through some of the metro stops and make it to the departing train station to Metz. We got our last Doner Kebab at the train station and headed back.
Our trip back was not so pleasant, however. We had a layover in a small German city, that like our trip to Metz from Greece, had no heated indoor area. After finding an enclosed area near the parking lot and cuddling up for 3 hours, we finally got to remain in a warm train until we got back to Metz...no more layovers for our future trips even if we leave a day early.
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