I had originally booked the trip thinking that we'd get the Eurail pass to take the train between countries, but then I realized that flying is actually really cheap between European countries, as well as way faster. It would have been nice to go through the countryside, but ultimately we decided that 9 hours stuck on a train was not optimal given that we were already moving between places very quickly and it would mean lost time in the city (as you can tell, we are all city folk here :P).

Day 1

The morning after we arrived in Berlin, we had to check into the hostel since we had let ourselves in the night before. This meant running around the block to try to find an ATM since we didn't have enough Euros between all of us to pay in cash @_@ (all my fave hostels take credit card~) The owner of the hostel gave us a quick introduction to Berlin -- we stayed at the Eastener, which was near the border of the former Berlin Wall, on the side of what used to be East Berlin. The hostel owner was concise, blunt, and very German :)

On his recommendation, we went a few blocks down to have brunch at a café he had recommended, called the Mörder Café. It was great! We noticed that Germans take their time with food, and don't rush meals. I also heard that Germans, when they come to the US, feel that restaurant service is very poor and rude because they come with food very quickly, are seated very quickly, and plates are taken away right after they are eaten. This is because in Europe it is more customary to sit and enjoy a meal slowly, and a server taking away a plate is read as a message to GTFO. But this is changing a lot now too, due to globalization probably. I read somewhere that the average meal in France used to take 90 minutes, but nowadays it's closer to half an hour.

After brunch, we walked over to the Berlin Wall memorial that was close to where we were staying. Unfortunately, the film was not being shown that day, which was the main attraction of the memorial. Nonetheless, we read a little about the history of the wall and went down to see the remains of it. Before this trip, I didn't really know anything about the Berlin Wall and the situation in the Cold War. It was a really educational trip, and Berlin is definitely a city that I think everyone should visit if only to educate themselves on major historical events in the recent past.




After the stopover at the memorial, we took the train over to the Jewish museum. I actually got a recommendation to visit this museum from an apartment building manager I met while apartment hunting in San Francisco in late April. He mentioned how the architecture was amazing, so obviously being the nerd I am I had to go check it out. Daniel Libeskind definitely doesn't disappoint! The museum itself was EXTREMELY saturated with information, tbh I don't think I was able to absorb it all because there was just too much @_@


After the museum, we stopped by for an afternoon snack at Le Lobo -- we had a meat pie and a fruit waffle. Tony also tried ginger beer for the first time and it apparently blew his mind. We also stopped by a supermarket nearby to see what they had. Everything was soooo much cheaper in Berlin than in Copenhagen! I bought a bar of hazelnut chocolate because I am fat, but immediately regretted it because it was super hot and it started to melt in my backpack, which meant obviously that we had to eat a whole chocolate bar at once. It was for sure tasty ... but probably would have been better had in moderation, lol.




In the afternoon, we went to the East Side Gallery, which was in another part of town and featured more leftover Berlin Wall. Many artists have worked on the wall since the wall came down in 1989 up until the present day -- there are some parts of the wall still being painted on! It's nice that they fenced off the wall so that the wall wouldn't be vandalized as heavily, and the artworks were all super cool.

We ended up walking along the wall all the way to Alexanderplatz, where we ran into an African street market where we decided to have dinner before heading back to the hostel. Someone had recommended currywurst, which is a Berlin delicacy(?) which is basically curry and german sausage. It tasted like what you would expect, but I guess we can tick that off the list at least haha.

Day 2

The next day, we had a waffle breakfast at the hostel (consisting of waffles we'd bought the day before at the supermarket), and set off to continue the adventure! We started the day with a walking tour with Sandemans. They have these tours all over Europe, and it's a pay-what-you-want model. The tourguides live off the tips though, which our guide was more than eager to point out repeatedly, so it's not exactly free despite the name.

Nonetheless, it was fun -- we walked around the middle of Berlin and saw a lot of historically important sites and learned about a lot of them that we would never have known about otherwise (eg. the bunker where Hitler died, which is underneath a normal old parking lot now). Another fun part of the tour was when we went past the former Luftwaffe HQ, previously the center of the Nazi regime which turned into East Berlin administration during Soviet rule. A super imposing building that makes you feel small, hilariously (or fittingly?) now the center of tax administration. If you wanna read more about the tour and what we saw, this guy went on the same tour as us (literally, like I think he had the exact same tourguide) and also is a better photographer than me, so you can read about it on his blog. I am #include-ing this for convenience lol lazylazy. 




As for original thoughts... well, it was really amazing to see this stuff in real life! It's pretty cool that these days you can find anything you need on the internet, but it's actually a very awesome feeling to be standing immersed in the atmosphere as you look up at these giant buildings and consider how other people have stood in your position in the past and think about what's happened around you in the same spaces. It's sort of indescribable, but I definitely got that feeling a lot in Berlin because it's so rich in history. We stopped by a nearby coffee shop for a quick lunch after the tour, because all the walking made us pretty hungry *_*!



In the afternoon, we decided to visit Pergamon museum on museum island -- there's a bunch of really great museums all next to each other! But, museums are really draining so we agreed to only do one. I'd love to go back and see the others another time though. The Pergamon didn't accept our student IDs because we needed to have "international student id"? I'm not really sure what this is, but this is the only time in the trip that our student IDs didn't work. Nonetheless, they have a giant exhibit from Rome from the time of Trajan/Hadrian, as well as a reconstructed Ishtar's Gate from Babylon, which was just amazing to see. The only reason it's in Berlin is because some German guy excavated it all, but would recommend a visit if you're into ancient civilizations. There are so many that I didn't know about! I guess we never really think about old civilizations in our day to day lives anyway, but it was cool to learn about things I had never heard about before.



After that, we took the train out to Kreuzberg -- we read about a design market online that was going on that night, and wanted to check it out. We also met up with Serena there and had dinner at a great Indian restaurant called Sadhu :3 They gave us free mango shots at the end! I had a sip and it was tasty :3 Then we had giant SOFT EIS (soft ice cream~~) at a place across the road and were fat.

The design market was super cool! Lots of artist hipster types, but we didn't end up getting anything. One thing that stood out were really well made leather wallets by a girl from the Czech Republic -- you can check out her website here. She picks out all the leather herself, dyes it, and then hand sews all of them. I'm thinking of getting one after my wallet bites the dust!

Day 3

We decided to take it slightly easier this day because we ran around so much before and were all sort of tired. We started the day off at the DDR museum (not like Dance Dance Revolution lol, but like Deutsche Demokratische Republik, which is the name of the East German government after WW2, ie. the German Democratic Republic). There were lots of interactive displays and games that taught us about life during the rule of the GDR. TLDR, life was not thaaat bad, it was just kinda bad, and definitely not as good as life with capitalism. The old Trabants are so cute though! But also hilarious in a sad way.




We went back to Kreuzberg for lunch, where we discovered that we had not been tipping and were supposed to, and then walked around for a bit trying to do some thrift shopping, but Alex didn't find the GATs he wanted (ironically we ended up running into some GATs in London, but he decided not to buy them in the end). We then took a trip to Tempelhof airport, which is a decommissioned airport that is now a public park. It was HUGE. Like I felt like I was walking through an abandoned city. I guess I always knew airports were big, but you hardly ever need to actually walk around in an airport by foot. *__* It was also freaking hot, so not exactly the best time to be out in a field-desert. But it made for awesome dystopic photos haha. And there was a cute dog.



For dinner, we had döner kebabs! They were soooo good. Gobble gobble gobble. After that, we went to Paul's Boutique, which is this super well stocked vintage/thrift store. They literally had a sneaker wall. Still didn't find anything we wanted though, but it was fun to look around! I guess traveling with just a backpack sort of limits what you can buy, but also raises your bar for stuff you would buy. It's better for the wallet in that way haha! Forced control :P



Day 4

We checked out of the hostel in the morning, and carried our giant backpacks with us since we were planning to take the train out of Prague in the afternoon. We had a quick breakfast at a Cafe Balzac in the area, where I tried to get rid of as many Euro coins as I could D; Carrying coins while traveling is so annoying...

After breakfast, we headed to the topography of terrors -- I thought the display outside was the whole thing, we spent a lot of timing reading everything. But then! We went inside and there was an even bigger display @___@ I was super tired at this point since my backpack was fat and heavy, so I didn't read the whole thing. But I went around a bit more til it was time to leave for the train station....

We quickly hustled our way over to the central train station and grabbed some sandwiches at the food court for lunch while we waited for the train~~ then we got on the train and headed to Prague! :3

To be continued, I guess...