Berlin

Sorry for the delay, but I just got my internet all set up. Meike and I went to Berlin for 5 days, and it is a really cool city. It's different because even though it has a long and interesting history, it is almost entirely modern. Most of the city was completely destroyed from World War II and had to be rebuilt. It's a bit hard for me to remember now everything we did, but we started our first full day doing a walking tour of the city. It was pretty cool because we really got to see most of the touristy things by walking in 3.5 hours, and it was free (minus tipping the guide at the end)! It was nice to have a guide too, because we were able to hear a lot of the history and stories of the buildings we stopped at.


The rest of the trip is already kind of a blur, we did a ton of walking and just exploring the city. I was surprised with how much green space was in the city; there were so many nice parks and areas to just lay down in the grass. Most days we bought bread, cheese, tomatoes, etc. and just ate lunch outside somewhere nice. The weather was also really nice the whole time, sunny and it got pretty hot towards the end. We also met up with my friend Kevin, a fellow Engineers Without Borders member from UT, who had been studying architecture in Berlin over the last month. It was nice to see him and also know someone that could take us to some cool and less touristy spots of the city. One night Kevin and I went and met up with some of his friends at a Biergarten, which I suppose is a must if you come to Germany. I also had the best post-beer snack after that, a Döner kebab (kind of like a greek gyros). There is a huge Turkish immigrant population and so there are tons of cheap stands everywhere. Since I hadn't actually eaten anything traditionally German, we went to a traditional German restaraunt on our last evening there. The atmosphere was really nice, as it was in a huge open square, with tons of open cafes and people walking around. I had some kind of pork roast in a yummy sauce, potato dumplings, cabbage salad, a large beer, and ofcourse apple strudel to top it all off. It was tasty, but not something I could eat regularly! On our last day we went to a flea market in this huge park, and it had a really cool atmosphere. I didn't buy anything because I literally had no weight or space to spare in my luggage, but it was neat just wandering around and seeing the interesting mix of stuff being sold. We also took a tour of the Reichstag (German parliament building) which was pretty neat. The inside has been completely rebuilt in a modern style, with the outer shell restored in its traditional style. There is a big glass dome on top that you can walk through and get a nice view of the city.

All in all, Berlin was very cool city!


View my Berlin pictures
View my Muelheim-Kaerlich/Winningen pictures (previous post)