BERLIN

Peace and gum... the Berlin Wall.

Berlin was our next stop in our German adventures… It too was a beautiful city, but definitely in different ways. Upon arrival we looked for our hostel for almost two hours before finally finding it… at which point we were pretty exhausted and had a fairly low key night – a couple glasses of wine and we were ready to cash in. It is still feels a little strange to look a waiter in the eye and order alcohol, but I’m never going to be underage again! Wahoo!

We woke up the next day in time for a tour of the city– I think it’s the best way to really see a big city like Berlin when you only have two or three days there. The organization “Free Europe” is amazing – they give great tours, and host awesome pubcrawls. I am sure I will do another tour with them in the future… and maybe a few more pubcrawls : )

Brandenburg Gates

There is so much to learn and see in Berlin, a four-hour tour really doesn’t do it justice. But it was a start. All day long we were crossing streets and sidewalks with double brick lines down the middle – signifying the former location of the Berlin wall. It was really bizarre to think there was once a wall actually dividing a city, and that it fell during my lifetime. Kaitlin pointed out that if my parents were born in Berlin, their lives would have been seriously affected by its presence.

Looking through a part of the wall that is still standing in the middle of Berlin

bullet holes were in almost every wall of every
building that remained from WWII

walking through the holocaust memorial in Berlin. Situated
no more than 200 yards from where Hitler's Bunker was
formerly located, the memorial is made up of 2,711 identical,
unmarked, gray slabs, all of different heights. The architect
never spoke of the significance of the number of blocks
nor the meaning of his design.

crossing the street, crossing the wall.

We ended the afternoon with a visit to the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which had come strongly recommended by a favorite GU professor. It was incredible – really shed light on the individual lives that were affected by the presence of the Wall. I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Berlin.

We finished off the night with a lively pubcrawl, met a bunch of Aussies, Kaitlin had a dance off with a professional Magic player (we’re not talking about a professional magician here folks, I mean MAGIC cards, like old school Pokémon… and he was on tour. Internationally. Pretty great.) We met a bunch of Aussies, and danced our way across the city…


The next morning we ventured out in the rain to find a Café that Kaitlin knew about somewhere down in the Kreuzberg quarter. Turned out to be an AMAZING meal, great fresh salad, really yummy bagel, and a perfect cappichino… I could have been back in Boulder for a minute there… Lunch was followed by some wandering and exploring, snacking on yummy dried fruits while we took a long walk through Tiergarten – maybe my favorite park so far.

An afternoon in Tiergarten

And the next morning, we were up early to head to Hamburg!

"Berlin"