I got my German textbook!  So now I can learn German!  Hopefully this goes better than my attempt to learn french.

Get excited!

Stem Cell Transplant Cures HIV In ‘Berlin Patient’

Today I was on my own for the first time in a long time.  Stuart went to Dresden for the day, but hopefully he and I will meet back up in Prague.  I sat myself down in the hostel’s kitchen for some breakfast and blogging this morning and ended up meeting these really cool guys from Sweden.

Thomas and Mack are travelling the world filming a documentary about street performers and what it’s like being a street performer in different countries.  There’s a good chance they’ll be in St. Paul this Fall, so hopefully I’ll get to see them again.

After breakfast I made my way back to Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis and went inside.  Lame.  The inside isn’t that great, and I kind of felt like it was a waste of time.  The outside is way more impressive.

Then I walked over to the War Memorial.  Why is everything under construction when I want to go see it?!?!  The memorial was boarded up because they’re doing construction on it, so instead of seeing the memorial itself, I got to see a very nice, giant wooden box with a painting of the memorial on the outside.  BUST!

Reichstag was next on my list, so I decided to wander through Tiergarten.  I got a little lost, but that was fine.  The Tiergarten was once a hunting ground, then it was bombed, and then it was heavily deforested during the hard times Germany had following the Second World War.  It has since been reforested and is now as beautiful as ever.  I highly recommend strolling through here if you have the time.

I underestimated how far Reichstag was from the War Memorial, so I ended up walking for a good… hour… but that’s fine.  When I finally made it to Reichstag, I only had to wait in line for forty-five minutes.  That might sound like forever, but it’s a relatively short wait for this particular place, and it’s TOTALLY worth it.

When you get to the dome, you have a bird’s eye view of all of Berlin.  You also get a free audio tour that explains everything you’re looking at as you walk up the dome.  I took a bunch of pictures from//of the dome and the observation deck.

I figured the Holocaust Memorial exhibit would be closed, and I’ve been pretty emotionally drained from all the other Holocaust exhibits I’ve seen, so I decided to save that for another day.  I also meant to go to a concentration camp, but I couldn’t find the time.  I’ll probably go to the one near Munich when I get there.

Falafel for dinner, blogging at the hostel, probably going to grab a beer and pack and go to bed.

Prague tomorrow!!!

I slept in a little bit yesterday which was absolutely woooonderful, and a little difficult since the sun comes up at like 5am here.  I walked around with my friend Stuart from New Zealand all day again, which was nice because he actually knows where he’s going.

We went to quite a few places.  We started back at the Topography of Terror so we could finish looking around and reading everything.  I highly recommend that exhibit to anyone visiting Berlin (and it’s FREE).  Then we made our way over to the Jewish Museum.

The Jewish Museum combines architecture and clever displays to force you to engage yourself.  It’s actually really interesting.  The way the main part of the museum is set up, when you walk in you become very disorientated because the hallways are set up in a zigzag formation and the floors are all slanted.  It’s very symbolic of the Jewish mindset at the beginning of the Second World War.  The displays are all inside the walls, and you have to almost press your face against the glass to be able to see them and read the captions, further engaging you.  Down one of the zigzags, you can enter the “Holocaust Tower.”  You have to open a large, thick metal door, and when it slams behind you, you find yourself along in a triangular, very tall, cement-walled room.  It’s very very dark with only a dim light from outside.  You can faintly hear the goings-on outside, but in the end you know you’re all alone.  It’s bone-chilling.  There’s also the Exile Garden.  Here, you have to walk on hazardous, uneven cobblestone through giant, slanted cement structures topped with willow trees.  It’s beautiful and significant.

After the main part of the museum, there’s a large exhibit on Judaism, which was interesting, but after the emotionally-draining first part of the museum, my attention span was at an all-time-low and I whizzed through the 150+ displays.

The next stop was the East Side Gallery.  Here, artists took over the last remaining strip of the Berlin Wall and reclaimed the space by painting beautiful murals signifying joy, remembrance, confusion, and the willingness to rebuild.  I think it’s amazing that most of the paintings have remained unmarred for so long.  My favorite portion had a caption which read, “Many small people who in many small places do many small things that can alter the face of the world.”  I included a LOT of pictures of the gallery so you can get an idea of what it looks like.

We ran over to Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis, but it was closed.  I think I’m going to try to stop by again today.

The line for the Reichstag was absurdly long, so we skipped that and made our way back to the hostel to find everyone else.  On our way past the Brandenburg Gate, we got stuck in the party end of the giant Gay Pride Parade that had taken place earlier in the day.  It was so fun!  Lots of people were dressed up and dancing and just having a really great time.  Once we got through, we took the U-Bahn back to the hostel, met up with the rest of our group, and walked over to the nearby industrial beer garden.

The beer garden is actually in an old bombed-out train depot in the middle of nowhere near our hostel.  They turned one of the old bomb shelters into a giant rock climbing wall and most of the rest of the area was just full of chairs and tables and big screens playing the World Cup games.

Another great end to another great day :]

Oh, Berlin.

So, yesterday, it took me about ten hours to get here.  When I finally did arrive, I decided to go out for a beer before bed, but, about a third into my liter, I realized I hadn’t eaten all day and nearly fell asleep in my glass at the bar.  Bad decision.  I was a little concerned about the rest of my stay in Berlin.

Luckily!  This morning I talked to a guy from New Zealand who was staying in my hostel room. Coincidentally he was planning on going to the same tour as I was, so I paired up with him all day.  We did the free tour again for a bit, and then met up with his friend from Melbourne to go watch the Germany World Cup game from the top balcony in a packed theatre.  It would have been better had Germany won, but it was still really fun.  We wound up walking through a park and grabbing a beer at a beer garden there before leaving his friend to go to Checkpoint Charlie and Topography of Terror.  The Topography of Terror was one of the most unsettling and life-altering exhibits I’ve ever been to.  It goes through a detailed history of how the Nazis started and progressed and the terror they brought upon unsuspecting Europe.  I highly recommend that exhibit to anyone in the Berlin area.

After the exhibits, he and I took the train back to our hostel because on Friday nights, the U Inn Berlin hostel has a night where you can come and learn to make authentic German food, AND you can eat of for FREE.  Yes!!!  Our chef decided to be a little more international today and make shepherd’s pie instead, but it was great.  Fun fact for everyone who’s been following my blog:  I, by chance, found out he had use some pineapple juice in the meat, so I ended up just eating the mashed potato top with cooked tomatoes and some strange German sauce.

At the dinner, I met a few kids from Georgia and Australia, and we, along with my new friend from New Zealand, bought a few beers and played hackeysack in a park late into the night, retreating to the hostel to check email, add each other on facebook, and watch some strange German television show about hot girls playing pranks on unsuspecting men.  And that is where I will leave you.  Have a wonderful rest of your night :]