Capitol City: Berlin

Highlights from Berlin:

We took a car with four people up as part of a 4-car entourage.  What should have been a six hour drive turned quickly into 9 hours on the road due to Friday traffic out of Stuttgart (think Chicago eek), a few severe traffic jams, and one large, deadly accident that shut the Autobahn directly ahead of us down for about an hour.

Still, we made it to Berlin around 2am Friday night/Sat morning.  Luckily our hostel was easy to find, had 24-hr check-in, and was all ready for us.  We dumped our stuff, made our beds, and of course headed back outside to get a beer (why not?).  Finally at about 3:15am we were back inside the hostel and going to bed... sleeping until 10am Saturday when we got up and our trip really began.

On Saturday we took a walking tour ourselves of the larger sites in the city.  We saw a historical account of the pre-thru-post war period written on placards and panels along an old standing section of the Wall.  We saw the Holocaust Memorial, the Brandenburg Tor, the Hotel where MJ hung his kid out the window (hah), the Victory Column, the Reichstag, etc... lots to see and lots of walking.  It was beautiful weather!

on top of the Victory Column

In the victory column there was a small museum and the option to walk ~282 steps to the top of the tower and look out over the center of the city.  Of course we did that too.

Later on Saturday we went to dinner as a large group - about 12 of us, or 2/3 of the total group.  Got some Pizza and walked to a nearby open-air bar to watch Eurovision* for a bit... but we were bored there so we walked further into the 'bar scene' downtown and found an Irish pub to sit in and watch.  I swear, this group of int'l students LOVES Irish pubs... not that I'm complaining though. Sweden won the Eurovision, so we had 3 very happy companions for the night.   Our night continued at a club that was a bit overrated, sweaty, and loud for me, but we stayed until 5am and then walked an hour home along the East Side Gallery**.

After sleeping some (2 hour or so for me..) we got up early and Everyone did their own thing on Sunday.  I went with 4 friends on a boat tour through the city, which was really a great deal for 2 hours of the morning and seeing quite a lot of the sights.  Sunday afternoon we saw the East Side Gallery (by day!), Alexander Platz, and then met up with everyone for the evening.  We celebrated the end of one of our friends' stays in Germany (he was returning to England after the weekend) at a steakhouse and then went out to a cultural festival near my hostel.

The fest was a bit boring... lots of food and drink tents and some bongo music ...but nothing really to do.  I tried a Brazilian  drink and bought some dried fruit and we went back to the hostel, sat in the common room and had a G&T, and went to bed.

Berliner Dom from the boat

On Monday I came back with 2 other people from our group; I decided to save some money and study and relax a bit in Stuttgart rather than continue on to Dresden and Prague.  In the morning, though, I still had time to get out to the Olympia Stadium from the 1936 Olympics.  It was a quite a sight... a huge stadium, a bell tower that scratched the clouds, lots of little tracks, an interesting museum, and some old and barely hidden Nazi symbolism and swastikas.  Really a neat little end to the Berlin trip for me!

Getting home only took about 5 hours driving; we made great time and thankfully no more big accidents!

*Eurovision is a competition in Europe held anually, similar to American Idol where each country submits one performer/singer/band and all the other countries vote for the winner... really funny!

** East Side Gallery is the largest still standing continuous piece of the Berlin Wall.  It is now (and has been since '90) completely mural'd over by commissioned artists, and the pieces looked to have been redone every 10 years.