Voyage to Berlin

My week in Berlin was marvelous.  It is just a great city with lots of museums and cool things to do.  After 5 days we didn't get to see that much of it; I can't imagine trying to visit just for a weekend.  It is a big city, but it has a different vibe than Paris--people on the metro are still in a hurry but if they bump into you they stop to apologize.  And, well the city is not that expensive so we ate well and cheaply (I am remembering many bad yet expensive meals in Paris).   It has lots of things to do like most capital cities but lacks the stressed and pretentious atmosphere of other big cities.

We came by bus (a part of our super-low budget plan), and it was my first international coach experience.  As soon as we got on the dirty and crowded bus, I realized that you get what you pay for.  All of the bus drivers spoke only Polish and didn't seem to know what was going on.  In Berlin on the way home no one could tell us what bus we were getting on and just kept referring us to other people who didn't know either--causing us to wonder, "Are we in France, or what?" The good news is that (with the exception of a single transfer, which involved zero waiting time) we got there directly which is quite a change from my trips to Almeria which involve at least 5 different modes of transportation.  In total, the trip  took about 12 hours, but each way it was overnight, and though I didn't sleep too well on the buses, it was nice not to waste entire days en route.

So we arrived on Monday at 6a.m. and it was snowing fairly heavily (this didn't stop all week until Friday when it turned into rain).  It was a lot colder in Berlin, which made me develop a little appreciation for the weather in Lorraine.  The good news about snow is that it makes for nice pictures!  Our hostel was really well located, not far from Unter den Linten, which is a street with lots and lots of historic places like the cathedral, university, museums, the operahouse and, Opernplatz, the square that was the site of the Nazi book burning (see the third Indiana Jones film...).  The monument for this event is really cool...it is a window in the ground down to a room full of empty bookshelves, enough bookshelves to house all of the books that were burned.  

On Tuesday we did a free walking tour, and it was really cool.  It was nice to get a sort of "insider" view of the city and to see thing that we wouldn't have known how to find otherwise, such as the site of Hitler's underground bunker (which is now completely unmarked).  We also got to see building which housed the Nazi airplane strategists, which is now a tax office, and a cool socialist propaganda mural, which is left up as a reminder of the past, and finally we saw a lot of the wall and learned exactly how it worked.   There is so much history to the city that it is almost overwhelming. 

For the rest of the trip, we did a lot of shopping, saw a cool film museum in Potsdamerplatz, went to the national gallery, and found a really fun pub quiz in both German and English where we met some nice Berliners.

I also had the opportunity to meet up with some German friends who have moved to Berlin.  Luisa worked in Metz's tourism office last year and was my next-door neighbor in the foyer de jeunes travailleuses before I moved out.  She met with us and took us to a cool restaurant.  She is now working for the German Ministry of Foreign affairs, which is a really awesome job, and I am glad to have a connection there--who knows when I might need it?  

We also got to meet up with my friend Janne--we'd become last year in Metz because she was the roommate of my friend who was an assistant.  Janne took us around her neighborhood, which was really cool since it was a little off the beaten path and felt like "real Berlin."  

So Germany earns a place on my list of coolest places and places where I could imagine myself living--if I only spoke German!  Well maybe I'll start thinking about that once I conquer Spanish.