Berlin Bitte!

February 5th - We decided not to sleep in the airport this time... instead I was up until 10:30 packing and woke up at 1:15 am to finish packing and get to the bus stop by 2:15 am. Unfortunately the bus stop was not where we thought it was and just barely made it onto the bus that we thought was the correct one. Wrong direction. Woops! We had to hail a cab to take us to the airport bus stop. Security was extra intense. They took all of my clothes out of my bag and swabbed the lining. I swear I'm not a terrorist! As soon as we arrived in Berlin we went on a walking tour of all the main sights. We hit up Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Berliner Dom, the Holocaust Memorial, etc. It has been such a harsh winter in Germany that the government hasn't been able to salt all of the roads... and the snow and ice made my socks wet. It is horribly uncomfortable to have wet socks in below-freezing weather for 4 hours. We went to dinner at a place called the Tiergarten Quelle, which served traditional German food. I had a schnitzel with Lemke original beer - SO delicious! For dessert we split a kaiserschmarren - kind of like a drier bread pudding with cherries and whipped cream. We sat at a community table with 3 other locals. We just sat around talking for several hours... like everyone else in the restaurant. It was cool feeling submerged in the culture.

The Holocaust Memorial
The Berliner Dom
Kaiserschmarren

February 6th - We took the train to Oranienburg, the location of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. After a 20 minute walk from the station, the same walk that prisoners took through town during WWII, we arrived at the camp. We saw the Commandant's House, 2 of the remaining Small Camp (Jewish Camp) barracks [they were partially rebuilt due to arson in the early 1990s after the visit of the Israeli Prime Minister], the Gestapo prison, the prisoner's kitchen, guard towers, an execution trench, Station Z (named Zed because it is the last place a prisoner would go before dying), and the pathology room (where autopsies and experiments were done)... among other buildings. It was really astounding. Standing in front of the main roll call area gave you the ability to scan most of the camp. It is overwhelming to picture the condition of the camp back during the Holocaust. I could've spent several more hours at the camp, but we were forced to leave because it closes early during the winter. That night we went to a restaurant called the Altberliner Wirtshaus. This time I ordered knuckled pork, which is a favorite German dish. It sounds kind of gross, but it was actually pretty good (despite being a little dry). We had Bitburger beer as well. I've decided that I should be very grateful for not growing up in Germany... I would be so overweight with all of the starchy carbs, meat, beer, and pastries. It was fabulous for the weekend though! After dinner we met up with a German friend that was a foreign exchange student at my high school. We went to this wine bar called Winerie, where you pay 1 euro for as much wine as you want. We couldn't really stay though because it was so crowded and there was no where to sit. When we were walking around we ran into a group of girls at a bachelorette party. The rules of their night was that the bride had to do whatever her friends to her to do. Part of their game was to ask every guy if she could cut the tags of their shirts. The boys complied. I think it is really fun and interesting to interact with locals. Later we went out to a club called Berghain Panorama Club, which is inside an abandoned warehouse. We waited outside in the coldest weather I've been in since I arrived in Europe for about an hour. We kept seeing people getting rejected in front of us, but because we had put in the effort to get there and wait in line we wanted to try to get in anyway. There were several people in front of us that had been talking in English the entire time. When we got near the front I heard one of the girls say "We should probably start talking in German now." Of course, they were let in. The bouncer waved us forward and starting talking in German... obviously we did not understand. When he realized we could not communicate with him he said "We don't want it here." Ouch... our first experience with people disliking us simply because we are American. We were pretty bummed after waiting in the cold, but realized we still had more fun stuff to do in Berlin so we picked up our heads and headed back to our hostel, the Meininger Hotel (which was really nice by the way!)

Prisoner's Gate at Sachsenhausen
my German friend Kobi and I in front of Alex

February 7th - This morning we headed to the Topography of Terror - an outdoor exhibition on events relating to Hitler, the GDR, WWII, and the Berlin Wall. Hundreds of photographs and explanations provided a lot of insight to the history of the area we were in. We went to the Ritter Sport Chocolate store after - where we got to choose things to put in our own chocolate! One of mine had strawberry bits, orange bits, and yogurt crisps and the other had peppermint crisps. It was a lot of fun watching them mix it up, refrigerate it, then break it out of the molding and wrap it. The end products are delicious (I'm trying to savor them. I'm so proud, I'm less than half way done on each of them!) Ritter Sport also served drinks... we got hot chocolate with our choice of chocolate pieces melted into them. I chose praline... which was more than satisfactory :) For dinner we went to a famous curry stand (kind of like the Pink's of Berlin!) called Curry 36. I got the currywurst with fries (and ketchup, not mayo... gross!). Alas, our trip had come to an end. We got on the S Bahn (German public transportation is pretty confusing by the way) and made our way back to Schonefeld Airport.

Brandenburger Tor
Berlin Wall
Ritter Sport store
Curry 36