Berlin

Our Berlin trip was a crazy whirlwind experience. Its about a two and a half hour drive from Wernemunde to Berlin and back. Additionally, we parked a little in the outskirts of the city and the subway trip into Berlin was about thirty minutes long. Needless to say, although we had a whole day in Berlin, much of it was spent traveling.

When we finally made it to Berlin, I took over as the city tour guide. ;We circled around the Reichstag, which is Germany's parliament building. The dome is supposed to let German citizens look down as their Parliament writes the laws.

Our next stop was the Brandenberg Gate and Pariser Platz, which I believe may have been one of the gates to the city at some time.

Then, it was the Holocaust Memorial, which is formally known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. I love this memorial. Essentially, it consists of a series of columns/pillars of varying heights that create narrow alleyways. Its supposed to emulate the Jewish Quarters and the paranoia of not knowing what's around the corner. It doesn't help that it's incredibly easy to get lost within the memorial.

We stuck around that area for an awkward amount if time. We did some epic postcard shopping, forced some tourist shop to break a 50 Euro bill, and decided to eat. We sat down at some restaurant, but after being ignored for fifteen minutes and then realizing that it was 2:30 and we needed to be on the road by 5:00. Unfortunately, in our rush to leave, I left my beloved Lexis Nexis water bottle behind :,( I know

From the Holocaust Memorial, we moved on to the parking lot that is the location of the bunker that Hitler died in. While they have a historical sign up, there really is nothing else there to signify what that location is because anything more would run the risk of memorializing an evil man.

Our next major destination was Checkpoint Charlie. I should have had us take a subway there, but we ended up walking there. We managed to find a stand selling bratwurst and currywurst and were happy. Unfortunately, we realized at that time that we did nit have much time left in Berlin. I had a couple of other places to show everyone, but due to time constraints decided to fast forward the trip to one of my favorite Berlin spots, the East Side Gallery.

Its actually a considerable trip from Checkpoint Charlie to the East Side Gallery, so we took the subway there.

The East Side Gallery is the longest remaining strip of the Berlin Wall, which is now an art gallery. Since I've last been there, the murals on the wall have changed, so a lot of the graffiti that we saw last time has since been painted over.

We had to make a bathroom stop and needed our obligatory German beer stop, so we stopped at some Bavarian themed beer garden along the wall. It was actually kind of cool drinking beer right next to the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, that stop took up some time, so while it would have been great to walk along the length of the East Side Gallery, it was time for us to circle around and head back.

The trip back to the car went smoothly, but we nevertheless had a very stressed Oppa. He's been the "new Oppa" who doesn't stress for much of the trip, but after the first hour in Berlin,  we definitely only had old Oppa.

Trip back to Wernemunde also went smoothly. We returned the car, boarded the ship, and ate dinner. Some of us spent some time in the casino. James and Jimmy ran away from a girl.

All in all, a very evemtful day. It was fun, but it definitely would have been nice if we had more time to spend in Berlin. It really is a cool city. Its not as pretty as other European cities like Paris or Rome, but it's just a cool city.hu