Un Bar à Berlin

A riverside bar that I passed every night, walking over a bridge to go back to the downtown train station.

Berlin Journée 4!

So, I got up and headed to Potsdamer Platz, which is a square with a lot of really cool, modern buildings. I'd heard it looked really cool lit up at night, but I decided to stop by it in the morning on my way to some museums. There's a movie theater and some fancy restaurants, and a huge Sony store. And a Lego giraffe!

Then I hunted around and (miraculously) found Fresco, a coffee shop the tour guide had recommended. I got this delicious iced chocolate coffee drink. Kind of like a frappucino, but smoother.

Then I went to the Stasi Museum, which is about the secret police during the Cold War. It was pretty creepy to learn about the hundreds of thousands of files they had on people. There were examples of their records and surveillance on display, as well as the stories of different people who got caught having dissenting views.

Next, I went to the Topography of Terror Museum. Outside, on a lower level, there is a timeline about Hitler's rise to power and World War II. Inside, there is a very comprehensive exhibit about the Holocaust, which emphasizes all the different groups Hitler victimized.

Outside Timeline

Indoor Exhibit

Nom nom nom!

After I finished going through the museum, I had to head back to my hostel to register for classes at UCSD :O . I was a little annoyed to have to go back in the afternoon to register, and a little nervous the website wouldn't work on the hostel computer, but luckily it did. So after registering and recovering a little (did I mention how hot it was in Berlin??), I headed back out to go a famous currywurst restaurant, Curry 36. It looked a little out of the way on Google Maps, but Wikitravel assured me it was THE place to go for a Berlin currywurst. 

And it was delicious! It did end up being quite a walk from the train station, but it was worth it. A currywurst is a fried sausage that's cut up into slices and served with curry ketchup. You eat the little pieces with a toothpick!

Then I figured that since I had just turned 21 and was visiting a country famous for its beer, I should probably try at least one. So I popped into a nearby grocery store and grabbed one. Beer is so cheap in Berlin! You could get a single bottle for like 30 euro cents. :O I decided to go high rollin' and spring for an 80 cent bottle.¹ I didn't want to drink it right then, so I carried it around in my backpack and made a mental note not to lean back against anything...

Then I took the train to Potsdamer Platz again to see all the buildings lit up at night. They looked so cool! There's some kind of canopy above the plaza that lights up different neon colors at night, and the big fountain lights up alternating colors too.

Then on my way back, I decided at the last minute to get off at the Brandenburg Gate stop so I could see that lit up too. It was so pretty! I was glad I stopped. :) ²

Then I finally headed back to my hostel. I was so tired! I did drink the beer before going to sleep though, haha. I opened it with my keys!³ It was actually pretty good, or at least much better than my previous experience with beer...⁴

À bientôt!

1.I would like to note that I did not get carded! Oh, Europe!
2. I don't know if I should have been going around by myself at night in a foreign city, but I was careful and stuck to places with lots of other tourists, so it was fineeeeeee. 

3. Look at me gooooo. 

4. That ended up being disgusting. :/

Berlin, Journée 3

I woke up early(ish) and headed to Museum Island, to the Pergamon Museum! My tour guide had highly recommended it, so I decided to check it out. The Pergamon was a very different stop in Berlin for me because I mostly went to World War II and Cold War sites/museums. However, the Pergamon covers antiquity, Islamic Art, and the Middle East.

After buying your ticket, the first thing you see when you walk in is the front part of the huge Peragamon Altar, which was excavated in Turkey and then transported all the way to Berlin and reassembled inside the museum. It's really cool to walk up the stairs and see all the statues of gods and mythical creatures up close. It's crazy to think they moved the whole thing from Turkey!¹

The rest of the first part of the museum contains other reconstructed ruins from the Pergamon Altar. Even though I don't know much² about the history around it, I still enjoyed the exhibit.

Next, I saw the Ishtar Gate, which was built all the way back in 575 BC and used to guard the city of Babylon. Oh and it used to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World!³ This exhibit was a lot more colorful than the altar, and I loved the blues and golds. It was really cool to walk down the hall and look at all the mosaics on the walls of the gate.

Lastly, I went to the Islamic Art section, which was also amazing. The tiles and ceramic work are so intricate, it's incredible.

(Actually not sure which part this thing was in, but it's pretty.)

After reluctantly leaving the sweet, sweet air conditioning of the Pergamon, I took the train to the East Side Gallery, which is where a long stretch of the remaining Berlin Wall has been turned into a gallery of graffiti art. Artists from all around the world came to paint a section after the Berlin Wall fell, to symbolize change and a new freedom for the city. 

It was very hot and pretty crowded - I had to awkwardly stand and pretend to fiddle with my camera while I waited for people to pass by so I could take a picture of some of the art. Nonetheless, it was really cool to walk down the wall and see all the different graffiti paintings. They vary a lot, from crazy and colorful and fun, to overtly political, to dark and ominous, to bright and optimistic.

I also saw this cool bridge near the end of the East Side Gallery. There was a rock band playing inside.

Next, I visited the third part of the wall that is still standing. This part was cool because it's in an open grassy area instead of being right on a busy street. There are remnants of the wall and steel poles that show were the outer and inner walls and the death strip were. There's also a memorial to all the people who died trying to escape to the other side of the wall. Across the street, there's a small museum with a viewing platform, so you can take the stairs up and look down at what the walls and a guard tower would have looked like back during the Cold War.

Memorial to people who died trying to cross the wall

I think these represented the signal fence between the inner and outer walls.

Observation Tower

View of the death strip from the tower

Later, when I was walking back to the train station to go home for the night, I stopped to rest near the Brandenburg Gates, and all of a sudden, thousands of roller bladers went by! There were police escorts and music playing, like a big party. I saw a couple roller blading nights like that in France too, so apparently Europeans love roller blades! I couldn't believe how many people were participating, I was sitting there for like ten minutes watching them go by, so I took a video:

À bientôt!

1. Apparently, this is a little controversial nowadays.
2. Okay, anything.

3. I guess it got kicked out though. Burn.

Berlin Journée 2, Partie 2

So after resting a little after all that walking, I got a delicious cheese pretzel from a street vendor. Oh, Germany! You and your delicious pretzels!

This was conveniently right next to Berliner Dom. Even though it looks pretty old (at least to me), Berliner Dom was actually finished in 1905. So compared to a lot of famous European churches, it's practically brand new! Nevertheless, I was so taken with how it looked on the outside, that I wanted to see the inside too. When I found out it was 4€ to enter, I was a little annoyed because I don't think churches should charge admission, but it turned out that it also included walking around the dome at the top, so then I was okay with it.



The inside was so beautiful! Everything was really clean and gold and marble-y. The organ was playing a little too, which was pretty. One really cool thing was that you could go up to a balcony seating area and look down on the main floor of the church, which gave you such a pretty view of everything. In all the other churches I've been to, going up a level was either not an option or cost extra. But looking down on everything (or right at eye level with some of the statues and molding) really added to the experience.

Then, I took about a billion stairs up to the dome, where you could go out and walk around the whole thing, so you could see an incredibleee panorama of the whole city. Since it was right near closing time, I was practically the only one up there. It was really cool to look out and see all the Berlin landmarks I recognized.

Right as I was about to go down, a security guard came and told me and an older woman that we had to leave now anyways. She was a little slower going down the endless stairs,¹ so I lost track of them on the way down. Following the exit signs, I ended up in this creepy crypt underground, where there were a few lingering tourists and  a bunch of tombs for important dead people.

If I recall correctly, the Berliner Dom closed at 6 and the information center at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe closed around 8. So I headed over there to the sort of underground museum. I didn't take any photos, but the center was very interesting and solemn. There were stories and photos of Jewish families and what happened to each of the family members. There was also a room with letters people had written to their loved ones during the war. A lot of it is hard to read, but I'm glad I went.

So that was my second day in Berlin! À bientôt!

1. Some of them were pretty steep too! I wish they had had an elevator for her.