I’m catching up! I’m catching up! My only motivation is that I’ve been with my friend Kristina for the past few days, and she’s started blogging. However, because she just started her trip, she’s basically caught up and will provide major spoilers for my mom! Gah. Must get ahead.
So the original plan was that Kristina would fly into Frankfurt from Vegas, and then we would meet up in Berlin. We chose Berlin through a very thorough combing of flights and trains via Google and spreadsheets to find an option that allowed for reasonably priced and well-timed arrivals from both Frankfurt and Venice. Plus, I had never been to Berlin and wanted to give Germany another chance after my not-the-best trip to Hamburg in 2015.
Our flights were both scheduled to arrive at 4:10pm on July 3rd, at different airports. From there, we would make our way to the Airbnb to meet up, and then she’d be with me until the end of my trip! Yay!
We’ve known each other since kindergarten, and she’s never left North America, and I’ve never been to Spain (our main destination), so this trip was a big step for both of us. (:
One problem: as I got in bed my last night in Venice, I got a string of texts saying that her flight to Frankfurt was delayed. Something needed to be fixed in the plane, and nobody knew how long it would take to fix it. Luckily, her layover in Frankfurt was four hours, so as long as the situation was sorted in the next couple hours, we would be able to meet in Berlin as planned. Seemed a reasonable thing. I said goodnight and good luck and went to sleep.
I awoke that morning to a second string of texts, this one more panicked than the last. The flight was delayed indefinitely. Condor was putting everybody into the Hooters Hotel for the night (classy). They couldn’t find a replacement plane, so they had to keep working on the one they had. It could be hours. Could be days.
I DON’T HAVE DAYS, CONDOR.
I was not pleased. What is up with this trip and plans going amuck?! Grrrrjalaldnfhwupamnehikap!!!
There was nothing to be done, though. I would be spending at least one night in Berlin by myself. Woop.
I think we must have been looking for apartments on the cheap, because our stay was nowhere close to downtown Berlin. The neighborhood was a bit sketchy, honestly, and I had to take a train if I wanted to get into town.
Luckily, the room was nice and had a lovely balcony. It was a room in a three-bedroom apartment, and the roommates were super nice. Neuroscientists finishing up their masters in Berlin. Crazyyy. One was from Estonia and the other from… hm can’t remember actually, but not Germany.
By the time I had found the apartment and settled in, it was about 7pm, so it made the prospect of taking a half hour train into town rather unenticing. I would only have an hour or two of daylight, and all the museums were closed already. I decided instead to wander my little neighborhood.
Was still a little sketched, but most of that was fixed when I found this glooorious grocery store. It was called Penny, and you could literally buy things for pennies!!!
19 cent yogurt! 29 cent fancy yogurt with granola topping! 39 cent pasta! 69 cent tortellini! 39 cent croissants! 37 cent chocolate! $1.50 wine! I was literally in heaven. I love deals. And I love food. And I love deals that involve food. I just. Wow. Just wow.
Not wanting to stock up right before dinner, I got some chocolate and ran out before I became trapped forever. I’ll be back, my love, I thought as I took one last look at the $1.50 wine.
I continued meandering down the main street lined by the train station so I would be able to find my way back easily if it got dark. There were a lot of cafe/ pub type things, and the menus and signs in front of each indicated that everything out here was almost as cheap as in my beloved Penny.
I opted for a low-key Indian restaurant because I had been craving curry and because it was one of the few places without a mob of smoking Germans out front.
Can’t complain. The curry and the mango lassi tasted good, though the chicken had a sort of imitation krab texture. Meh.
To bed!
Updates from Kristina in the morning: she got a flight! Condor was putting her on a Eurowings flight to Cologne, with a connection to Frankfurt. She didn’t really need the connection though, so she ixnayed that second flight and booked one straight to Berlin to see meee! Huzzah!
She wouldn’t arrive until ten at night, sooo… what to do?
Ended up laying in bed until four. Sorry! I was exhausted again! I read a bunch, blogged a bit, and slept a lot. Oh, and I ate the heck out of that Penny chocolate. Hahaha.
When my stomach decided it was done putting up with my laziness, I finished my curry leftovers, put on some pants, and grabbed a train into the city.
I had tried to form some sort of plan, but Berlin was confusingly sprawled and it was really hard to tell if there were any must-do activities. I figured taking the train into central station and just wandering would be the best thing to do.
Thing is, central station didn’t seem to have anything around it… I also couldn’t find a map, so I really was just wandering aimlessly. I think I walked around the entire station (which is huge, by the way), and all I found was construction and these giant pipe complexes coming out of the ground. (Found out later that these pipes are to release natural gases and nastiness from underground, because apparently Berlin is built on top of a swamp. This also explains the funky smell I kept stumbling upon.)
When I thought all hope was lost, and truly thought I was lost, I finally came across something worthwhile: a park!!
You know I love city parks, and while this one was certainly nothing to write home about (though I guess that’s kind of what I’m doing), it was still a lovely retreat from the construction and swamp pipes. I strolled through and sat down every once in a while before finding my final resting place for the evening: a shaded bench surrounded by trees and bunnies. So many bunnies! I couldn’t ever grab a picture of one, but they were there. And they were adorable.
About an hour later, as it began getting darker, I was hanging out on my bench, and my book was being pretty emotional so I may have been crying a bit. People kept walking by me, and I was a bit worried somebody would come to check on me or something, but that never happened. Until!
Until I caught sight of a blurry figure (through my tear-blurred peripheral vision) walking directly toward me. I wiped my eyes and prepared to explain to an older German lady that it was just my book, when I noticed my visitor was actually a young man.
Cue purse grabbing. Haha. Awkward. I was in a semi-sketchy park in the middle of a swamp under construction! And it was getting dark! It was just my first reaction.
But the boy kept walking until he was right next to me. Uhhhh…. So yeah. He was attractive. Uhm… very much quite so yes. So tan. And his eyes were those piercing blue types that just eat away at your soul.
I’m still a bit worried that he wants to steal my purse, but he changes tactics and says, with a wide smile, ‘Hi. Sprichst du Deutsch?’ I shook my head, and he quickly switched to English.
‘I just saw you here, and I wanted to say you are very beautiful.’ *beaming smile.*
Uhhhhhhhh…..
Mmmm……
Whaaaaa????…..
Honestly, the entire conversation is a blur, (and I mean literally – my eyes were still tear-blurred so it was pretty hard to see), but I am not making this up! It definitely felt like I was imagining it at the time, though. Hahaha. I kept trying to rub my eyes, but I couldn’t get all the tear-leftovers out of the way, so he always looked a bit fuzzy around the edges like I was actually imagining him. He seemed oblivious to the fact that I had been crying when he approached, and he continued on in this weird little conversation.
He asked if he could see me tomorrow. ‘What do you think? 7pm? We can meet at Alexanderplatz?’
I was just so confused. I kept saying no, I don’t know, and no promises, and he just kept asking as though what I had really been saying was, ‘Hmmm… yess… yes I like this idea very much…. I’m just playing hard-to-get…’
At one point, I kid you not, he asked where I was going next, and when I said Barcelona, he said, ‘It’s a good place to make love.’
….
BAHAHAHAHA. Okay. I’m done. I’m dead. Bahahahahahahahaha… literally cannot even. No.
He had to run to catch his train and was very sad about it, and we never did end up meeting the next day, but I guess I know who to hit up if I’m ever looking for a friend in Berlin! Bahahahahaha.
Those eyes though…
Okay, enough of that.
(:
I met Kristina at the airport shortly afterward and we traded stories about German boys and Hooters hotels. I also grabbed a bratwurst on my way in because I was enticed by this sign:
When Kristina came through the arrivals gate, I was so happy to see her! And I wasn’t late this time! And we were PUMPED for the adventure ahead.
Oh, I just realized I never talked about the bathroom in our apartment. Tehehe. First of all, there is the toilet. The building was pretty darn old, and I guess the plumbing is too, because we were not allowed to put any sort of paper inside the toilet. All toilet paper had to go into this tiny trash can with a broken flip-up lid that you had to pick up and then try to get to stay on again afterward. And the toilet barely flushed…. The water in the bowl was always this dark brown/ black color, and it smelled like death. Ack. Not the best.
And then there was the shower. On my initial house tour, one of the roommates explained that sometimes the water goes cold, but if that happens, you just have to go to the kitchen and push this giant button on the hot water tank. What?
Kristina and I decided the best thing to do was to make a system where we could notify the other if we needed the button pushed. What a mess.
Before going to sleep, we did some planning since our 2.5-day stay in Berlin had quickly become one. After looking online and rifling through the stack of brochures I had picked up from the airport, we decided the best way to make the most of the city was to do a bike tour first thing in the morning.
Kristina was excited. As was I. The tour was scheduled to last just over five hours, and we would get to see all the major sights of Berlin with a tour guide! What a steal!
There were three different guides, but we made sure to get Tom, a very tall and rather adorable English guy. We were not disappointed.
One of the first stops was Humboldt University’s old library, where one of the largest and most famous book burnings occurred during the rise of Hitler. In the middle of the square in front of the building, there was a glass panel under which lies a room filled with empty shelves in remembrance of this event. Empty libraries make me sad. ): But Kristina makes me happy!
We passed some pretty churches and concert houses…
And then we stopped near Checkpoint Charlie, one of the three (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie/ ABC) American checkpoints between East and West Berlin after the war. One of my favorite parts of this trip to Berlin was how much the guides and museums talk about life in Germany/ Berlin after WWII. I feel as though from the American perspective, the war itself was so huge and devastating, and the US generally benefitted from the aftereffects, so we never talk about the ‘after,’ or the Cold War’s impact on Germany. Over ninety percent of Berlin’s buildings were seriously damaged by bombing, and much of Germany was the same, so the entire country had to rebuild itself while acting as the rope in a passive-aggressive game of tug-of-war between the US, Britain, France, and Russia.
Tom drew this symbolic map of Germany to demonstrate how the country and its capital were divided amongst the great powers and to show how things progressed throughout the years. Props on pretending Germany is just a giant mug of beer. Pretty sure it’s not actually shaped like that.
We also saw a stretch of the Berlin Wall. I am honestly quite surprised that any of it survived in the immediate days, weeks, and months after its official downfall. It was interesting to hear about its construction, too: thousands of Russian soldiers put up a wire-fence version of it overnight in order to put an end to border-crossing between East and West Germany, and they didn’t begin laying the official concrete-and-brick structure until days later, when it seemed they had no opposition to the new piece of architecture. It was also interesting to see how short it was, especially compared to Trump’s dream wall between the US and Mexico.
Below is one of the oldest surviving watchtowers for the wall:
Next, we stopped at the Jewish memorial for the holocaust.
We spent a while wandering through the blocks, pondering what the meaning could be. Supposedly, the designer/ artist claims there is no true meaning to the piece, but that its purpose is to provoke contemplation and discussion. It was definitely disorienting walking through the maze of boxes. The ground rolled up and down, and the boxes became taller the farther in we went. I might glance to the right and catch a flash of someone walking through another row, but they’d be gone in a second and I’d wonder if I had imagined it. It reminded me of the maze Harry Potter had to go through at the end of the Goblet of Fire.
At one point, we were trapped and surrounded by walls fifteen feet tall on all sides. Tall, slick, unforgiving grey walls, and Kristina said this was what she could imagine the Mexican border wall to feel like. It was not a pleasant thought.
Everybody in the group managed to make it out and back to our meeting point so we could move to one of the city entrances from the 18th(?) century.
And then it was time for a visit to Tiergarten! Yay, city parks!!!
This park was massiveeee. I could have spent hours walking or biking through here. And I was super proud of myself for being able to take pictures while riding my bike! I normally have trouble taking a hand off long enough to signal or scratch my nose!
This is the Victory Tower, a piece from hundreds of years ago that I am quite surprised made it through the war’s bombings. I really wanted to go up to see the view, but we weren’t able to make our way back after the bike tour before it closed.
Oh. And here’s a great shot of our positively adorable guide:
I think I was being sneaky when I took this photo and pretended I was just taking a picture of the very interesting bushes behind him. Tehehehe. At one point on the tour, shortly before this photo, the two of us were a bit ahead of the rest of the group, so I asked him about working as a tour guide and his decision to end up in Berlin. I’ve noticed that no matter what city I go to, the guides are often from England, so it was pretty interesting to hear about. He asked about my plans when I returned to the States, and we talked about how much longer I had in Europe, and then he said, “Well, you’ll have to make sure you–” and then some horrible clanking/ wrenching noise came out of his bike, and he was suddenly not next to me anymore.
So that was confusing. Hahaha. I think his chain came unattached? He ended up having to stand on one pedal and kick the ground for the next half hour, using his bike more like a scooter, until he was able to fix it at lunch. And I never found out what I have to make sure to… do? Eat? See? I’ll never know!!!
Ah well. It’s up to my imagination, I guess.
Next, we went to the beergarten located in the middle of the Tiergarten. Tehehe. Kristina and I got a less-than-great tortellini salad and a seriously-delicious German barbecue meatball plate thing. Sooo good. We also met a girl from California on the tour who was travelling by herself, so she ended up eating with us and hanging out with us after the tour! Yay new friends!
After lunch, we saw a couple more pretty things on our way back to the bike shop.
We definitely fell in love with that green-topped cathedral above, so the first thing we did was head back to check out the inside and the view from the top.
Not disappointed. Kristina was going bonkers for it. She said it was one of the prettiest buildings she had ever seen in her whole life, and that it was one of her favorite parts of Berlin.
We also did some posing with the TV tower and this pretty statue:
And then we went to the DDR museum, which depicted life in East Berlin after the war. Again, so fascinating. I never realized or thought about how the Germans lied under Russian rule. So strict and confined. People had plenty of money but nothing to spend it on, as only basic goods were allowed into the city. Schooling was rigid and focused on community, and kids were taught how to throw hand grenades during gym…
Very interesting, indeed, and I feel like we should talk more about this part of Germany’s history. It gives a new perspective on communism and the Soviet Union, too.
After the museum, we headed back to the apartment, taking a minute to appreciate the super cool street art in our neighborhood:
And then bed time. We had to leave the house at 4:30 in the morning or something ridiculous because my travel planning is ridiculous. Gah. Luckily, and amazingly, it was already light when we left the house, so it was an easy trip to the airport.
Next up is Barcelona!
Venlig hilsen/ freundliche Grüße,
Lizzy-wa
