Friday
We took the train to Berlin at 6 AM. I was with all of my roommates and two more friends. It was a little early for my taste but the train was pretty comfortable. Its six people to a small car, sort of like in Harry Potter. After five hours we were in Berlin, but the real challenge was finding our hostel. Most people are surprised to find out that Berlin is bigger then Paris so the metro system is huge, it is above and below ground too. There are also a lot of homeless people yelling on it. After a lot of walking and metro transferring, we got to our hostel and were lucky to find that it was really nice and the people who worked there were really friendly. We were all really hungry so they directed us to an area with good restaurants and we found a small place ad everything was in German but they had a buffet, which is pretty rare in Europe but it was very good and inexpensive. Berlin was not as expensive as I thought it was going to be which was a nice surprise. It is not as cheap as Praha, but it is not as bad as Vienna. Then we went to Berlin’s new National Gallery which had a Jeff Koons exhibit, made of large scale objects that looked like they were made of balloons. It was very fun and whimsical. There was also a large Paul Klee exhibit which was interesting; I had never seen so much of his work before and how diverse it was. Some of the skeletons in his later work were very Tim Burtonesque. Afterwards we went back to the hostel and then it was time for dinner, we went to Café V, a vegetarian restaurant that was suggested in one of our guide books. It is in a very cool old building. I had a dish with spatchel (thick German pasta) and a raspberry beer that is a famous German specialty. It was good, but too sweet to have more then one glass. We were all tired to we went to bed early.
Saturday
We got up early to go on a tour of the city. It’s through a company that gives free tours, guided by young people who work on tips. It was really great, I saw a lot in just a few hours. Our host was a young British girl. German history is really fascinating and I am always so impressed by these countries that were behind the Iron Curtain that have come so far in just my own lifetime. We saw the Brandenburg Gate, Check Point Charlie, the Berlin Wall, the site of Hitler’s old bunker, where the book burnings took place and much more. Right in Parisner Square near the gate, and the French and American Embassies is a famous hotel where many w
orld leaders have stayed, including Bush and Obama but it is also the same hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby over a crowd of his fans. Another interesting sight (for very different reasons) was the Nazi Airforce building, it is the last remaining piece of Nazi architecture. It is HUGE and grey and looks sort of like a prison. During communism it was the Ministry of Ministries and today it is the tax building for the German building. It has a mural on it added by the Communist regime that has pictures of people demonstrating there love of socialism, later on a photo was added in the same proportions as the mural to show what the demonstrations really looked like under Communism. The Holocaust memorial was very unusual, it is actually called "The memorial to to the murdered Jews of Europe". It is many stone blocks of varying heights across a broad expanse of space. Supposedly the artist was inspired by the Jewish Cemetery behind the Pinkas cemetery here in Prague, but the idea is that the memorial is open to interpretation so the artist has been intentionally vague about its meaning.
After the tour we went to the German Museum of history at our tour guides suggestion. It was huge and covers the time from the Germanic tribes all the way up to the fall of the Berlin wall. Afterwards we got a quick dinner and rested at our hostel. Then we went on a pub crawl. It was a good way to see a few different bars. The first one, called Zapata, was my favorite. It was in an area known for the arts. There was an abandoned building behind the bar where artists had taken over and made into a gallery. The outsi
de of the building is covered in graffiti and inside there was a sculpture of a dragon that periodically would breathe fire.
Sunday
We got up and ate breakfast at the hostel, some people had school work to do so they went back on an earlier train but Naomi and I stayed. Then when we got on the metro the worst thing that has happened to me in Europe occurred. I say down and a man came in the door way and spit on me. I could not believe it happened. I looked at him and he smiled and walked back onto the metro platform. It was disgusting. As I tried to shake of what happened, we went to the Jewish Museum. It is probably one of the coolest museums I have ever been too. It is very modern but the ancient items inside do not seem out of place. It is interactive and suitable for children without being immature. I wish I could have spent more time there. Some interesting parts were the Garden of Exile and the Holocaust Tower. The Garden is a memorial to all of the Jews who were forced to leave Germany. It is vertical stone towers filled with earth that have olive trees growing out of the top. However, the ground it’s on is slanted and when you walk around it you feel disoriented, it is supposed to echo the feelings Jews had when they had to leave their home of Germany. The Holocaust Tower is a tall cement room. It is unheated and unlit except for one little slit where light shines through.
Afterwards, we looked at the New Synagogue. It has a Moorish style with a big onion dome on top. There is an exhibit inside but we only had enough time to see the gift shop and the main lobby. I really wish I could have stayed through Monday and seen more of the commemorations to Kristalnacht.
I really enjoyed my time in Berlin, but it is such a huge dynamic city, I wish I had more time to experience it.
We took the train to Berlin at 6 AM. I was with all of my roommates and two more friends. It was a little early for my taste but the train was pretty comfortable. Its six people to a small car, sort of like in Harry Potter. After five hours we were in Berlin, but the real challenge was finding our hostel. Most people are surprised to find out that Berlin is bigger then Paris so the metro system is huge, it is above and below ground too. There are also a lot of homeless people yelling on it. After a lot of walking and metro transferring, we got to our hostel and were lucky to find that it was really nice and the people who worked there were really friendly. We were all really hungry so they directed us to an area with good restaurants and we found a small place ad everything was in German but they had a buffet, which is pretty rare in Europe but it was very good and inexpensive. Berlin was not as expensive as I thought it was going to be which was a nice surprise. It is not as cheap as Praha, but it is not as bad as Vienna. Then we went to Berlin’s new National Gallery which had a Jeff Koons exhibit, made of large scale objects that looked like they were made of balloons. It was very fun and whimsical. There was also a large Paul Klee exhibit which was interesting; I had never seen so much of his work before and how diverse it was. Some of the skeletons in his later work were very Tim Burtonesque. Afterwards we went back to the hostel and then it was time for dinner, we went to Café V, a vegetarian restaurant that was suggested in one of our guide books. It is in a very cool old building. I had a dish with spatchel (thick German pasta) and a raspberry beer that is a famous German specialty. It was good, but too sweet to have more then one glass. We were all tired to we went to bed early.
Saturday
We got up early to go on a tour of the city. It’s through a company that gives free tours, guided by young people who work on tips. It was really great, I saw a lot in just a few hours. Our host was a young British girl. German history is really fascinating and I am always so impressed by these countries that were behind the Iron Curtain that have come so far in just my own lifetime. We saw the Brandenburg Gate, Check Point Charlie, the Berlin Wall, the site of Hitler’s old bunker, where the book burnings took place and much more. Right in Parisner Square near the gate, and the French and American Embassies is a famous hotel where many w
orld leaders have stayed, including Bush and Obama but it is also the same hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby over a crowd of his fans. Another interesting sight (for very different reasons) was the Nazi Airforce building, it is the last remaining piece of Nazi architecture. It is HUGE and grey and looks sort of like a prison. During communism it was the Ministry of Ministries and today it is the tax building for the German building. It has a mural on it added by the Communist regime that has pictures of people demonstrating there love of socialism, later on a photo was added in the same proportions as the mural to show what the demonstrations really looked like under Communism. The Holocaust memorial was very unusual, it is actually called "The memorial to to the murdered Jews of Europe". It is many stone blocks of varying heights across a broad expanse of space. Supposedly the artist was inspired by the Jewish Cemetery behind the Pinkas cemetery here in Prague, but the idea is that the memorial is open to interpretation so the artist has been intentionally vague about its meaning.After the tour we went to the German Museum of history at our tour guides suggestion. It was huge and covers the time from the Germanic tribes all the way up to the fall of the Berlin wall. Afterwards we got a quick dinner and rested at our hostel. Then we went on a pub crawl. It was a good way to see a few different bars. The first one, called Zapata, was my favorite. It was in an area known for the arts. There was an abandoned building behind the bar where artists had taken over and made into a gallery. The outsi
de of the building is covered in graffiti and inside there was a sculpture of a dragon that periodically would breathe fire.Sunday
We got up and ate breakfast at the hostel, some people had school work to do so they went back on an earlier train but Naomi and I stayed. Then when we got on the metro the worst thing that has happened to me in Europe occurred. I say down and a man came in the door way and spit on me. I could not believe it happened. I looked at him and he smiled and walked back onto the metro platform. It was disgusting. As I tried to shake of what happened, we went to the Jewish Museum. It is probably one of the coolest museums I have ever been too. It is very modern but the ancient items inside do not seem out of place. It is interactive and suitable for children without being immature. I wish I could have spent more time there. Some interesting parts were the Garden of Exile and the Holocaust Tower. The Garden is a memorial to all of the Jews who were forced to leave Germany. It is vertical stone towers filled with earth that have olive trees growing out of the top. However, the ground it’s on is slanted and when you walk around it you feel disoriented, it is supposed to echo the feelings Jews had when they had to leave their home of Germany. The Holocaust Tower is a tall cement room. It is unheated and unlit except for one little slit where light shines through.
Afterwards, we looked at the New Synagogue. It has a Moorish style with a big onion dome on top. There is an exhibit inside but we only had enough time to see the gift shop and the main lobby. I really wish I could have stayed through Monday and seen more of the commemorations to Kristalnacht.
I really enjoyed my time in Berlin, but it is such a huge dynamic city, I wish I had more time to experience it.
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