Well, it is Tuesday and POURING rain here in Lille...wow...am. I. ever. glad to be back! (seriously) As nice as it is to get away, it's also nice to be settled and have a home base again. It's also nice to get more than 5 hours of sleep a night! I'm going to post the trip in two parts, because I haven't finished writing the other half yet.
The pictures are all up though (WARNING! There are A LOT of them, 232 to be exact.):
http://picasaweb.google.com/leahskinner8Ok, Here we go:
Friday, February 23 / Saturday, February 24
Set off from Lille for Berlin on a 14-hour bus ride about 45 minutes later than anticipated. We thought that we had missed the bus! The bus was apparently coming from Russia, although our bus drivers spoke Polish…and nothing else. We therefore watched a crazy Polish movie with bad English subtitles and tried to sleep after that. After rolling in to Berlin at about 6 am, we found our hostel, David’s Cosy Little Backpacker’s Hostel, and chilled out until our free city tour at 1pm. Needless to say, we were tired! The tour was about 4.5 hours long and covered both East and West Berlin’s major monuments and history. It was really great because Berlin’s monuments are very tasteful and low-key, it’s easy to walk right over them and not notice! The site of the Nazi book burnings, for example, is commemorated with an underground library full of empty shelves, which is visible through a window placed into the ground. (I took a picture!) The Holocaust memorial is hundreds of coffin-sized rectangle concrete blocks of different heights in a square. It was very emotive. Interestingly enough, Hitler’s Bunker has no signs or mention at all. We “visited” the site on the tour, but it’s now a parking lot. Between the monarchy of Prussia, the Nazi’s and the Soviets, there is a lot of history in Berlin that I had no idea about! It was COLD though, so by the time the tour was over we were very happy to head back to the hostel to make dinner. They had a great kitchen so we made pasta and salad. So…after a long bus ride and a day full of activity, do you think we headed to bed early? NO! We went on a pub crawl put on by the tour guides…it was so worth it! We went to a swing club, a Russian bar, a bar in an old cellar and a “famous” Berlin dance club. The variety was awesome and I discovered my new favourite beer: Beck’s Lemon. Let’s just say we got in *late* (or very early the next day!)
Sunday, February 25
After such a late night, we definitely slept in on Sunday! We started off at a flea market in Tiergarten around noon – it is supposed to be the best one in Berlin…I was very successful! I bought a vintage navy snakeskin clutch with a gold chain handle and a gold crocodile on it. I bartered in English with a lady who only spoke German, it was interesting! Next up was some Starbucks (even though we didn’t buy any coffees!) where we made sandwiches with the groceries that we bought…totally a starving student moment. We then walked to an outdoor exhibit set up on the existing remnants of the Berlin wall called Topography of Terror. It focused on the trial of the remaining Nazi party after WW2 all the way up to the fall of the Wall. There is a lot of American influence around there as it is right next to Checkpoint Charlie, the famous American military base during the wars. We had a brownie and coffee break at the Adler Café, a historical building where spies used to congregate during the war to pass on messages and pick up information. Feeling quite touristy (and the fact that it was pouring rain) we went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum across the street, which was actually really cool! They had a lot of escape stories from people trying to cross from East to West Germany over the wall…one family made a hot air balloon out of their clothes! We met up with Adam after the museum and went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant we had seen the day before. It was soooo good – our server was Italian and, once he found out we were taking Italian at school (it’s one of the only sentences I know!) he wouldn’t let us order in anything but! So here we are speaking Italian while reading a German menu…I think I started speaking French at one point out of total confusion. We went to bed after dinner that night (although we didn’t finish until 10) on our amazing tatami mats. I think I might switch to the Japanese lifestyle!
Monday, February 26
Those beds were so comfortable we had another late start on Monday. This was fine because, yet again, it was raining. Our first stop was the Deutsche Guggenheim (free on Mondays) which was showing an Italian impressionism collection called “Arcadia & Anarchy.” While the French impressionists focused on nature, these works were more human-based, showing poor working conditions and lower-class families. We are so cultural haha! Down the street, there was a free photography exhibit at the Volkswagon dealership. Can you tell we are in Germany? The photos were all nature scenes and animal pictures in very “artistic” ways. I really liked them. Too bad Jeremy wasn’t there – cars and animals in the same place!! We went to Starbucks for lunch, and although we did make more sandwiches, we did buy coffee that time. We kind of split up for the afternoon, so while Malika and Adam went to see more sights, Katie and I went shopping in East Berlin. The area was very much like Whyte Ave, with independent boutiques and vintage stores. I ended up getting a locally-made dress and a second-hand jacket which Katie got some Birkenstocks. Being made in Germany, they are VERY cheap there! We met Malika at Zoo Garten (big train stop and shopping area) and made dinner at the hostel again: four cheese and spinach pasta. Not too shabby considering it cost less than 1 euro per person! That night we headed out to take some night pictures of the Brandenburg Gate and just walked around. I talked to mom on the phone that night before I hit the hay.
Tuesday, February 27
Katie and I got up super early on Tuesday to go the Reichstag, the German parliament building. There is a glass dome on top, which you can go up to for free and get a view of the whole city. The floor of it is also glass and looks down into their house of commons. Don’t wear a skirt to the Reichstag! We got some really great photos up there…and guess what was next? Coffee break at Dunkin’ Donuts! Germany is definitely more “westernized” than France, but I am NOT complaining! At 11 was our big concentration camp tour at Sachsenhausen. It was an hour train ride there and back, so we got to see some countryside on the way. The camp is in the town of Oranienburg, which pretty much sprung up during the camp’s use as a base for the SS officers. It’s a pretty cute little town now though! The tour was a great idea to visit the camp because we got a lot of stories and explanations about the life in the camp. Sachsenhausen was the very first concentration camp and served as a model for the rest. The conditions were horrible and many people died simply from the harsh lifestyle. They included a Jewish-specific memorial in some of the old barracks as they were treated the worst of all. It was really hard to hear all the stories but I think it’s important that they keep being shared so that history doesn’t repeat itself. We saw the gas chamber and body ovens, medical experiment labs and the prisons. Can you imagine 8 toilets for 4000 people? Although it was really really cold during the tour, I didn’t feel like I could complain! We grabbed some dinner on the way back…I had the famous Berlin currywurst: a curry bratwurst covered in curry ketchup (They sell Heinz curry ketchup in stores there!) We were going to go to a jazz club that night, but since they charged cover we went to an Irish pub and watched a football match and played games. Go Manchester United!
Wednesday, February 28
Today we all decided to split up for the day so we could get in the last few things we wanted to do. I started of at the Pergamon Museum, which houses the Ishtar Gates from Babylon. They are HUGE and imposing, bright blue tiles with life-sized lions prowl at head height. They also have an entire Greek temple inside and a crypt from Assyrian times. I really enjoyed it! Considering it was just me and myself that day, of course I went shopping! I bought a dress at Mango and tried on shoes in Berlin’s largest Skate shop. Van’s shoes are WAY cheaper in Edmonton! I ate a great little artsy café for lunch and had a bagel (impossible to find in France!), accidentally running into Malika, Adam and Jonathon who were walking by. Even in another country, you can’t stop seeing people you know! I did some more shopping (Adidas tack jacket baby!) and finished at KaDaWe, Berlin’s 7 story department store. It was very similar to Bloomindale’s in New York. I loved it! I met up with everyone at the hostel and we went to the bus station to get on another stinking bus to Paris. I know it’s the cheapest way to travel but *shudder* we sat by these really big German men who smelled like garlic sausage and onions. I did get a lot of knitting done and logged a couple hours of sleep. Katie got some really weird Banana milk at a gas station. Yep…it was really exciting!
More in Part Two…Coming Soon!
