"I am a Berliner!" Kennedy's Berlin quote narrowly beats out Reagan's for the title of this week's blog—mainly because he said it German. All that to say, this weekend's trip was Berlin, Germany!
Thursday:
Happy Thanksgiving! Very grateful for all of you and your loving support! Hope you had a wonderful day spent with family, I know I was certainly missing mine. My day was instead spent like most Thursdays, doing homework and packing for the weekend. The school did have a Thanksgiving dinner for us (certainly not comparable to the food back home, but the sentiment of having a meal together in celebration of all the wonderful things we’ve had to be thankful for this semester was very nice and greatly appreciated.) It ended up being a very short meal (perhaps the downside to it starting at 9 pm?) so it wasn’t long before my friends and I were on our way to the airport where we would be spending the night before our early flight the next morning. I FaceTimed into my family’s dinner for a little bit and then braced myself for a long night of very little sleep.
Friday:
The sole benefit to the complete and utter exhaustion following a largely sleepless night is how much easier it is to fall asleep on the plane! Accordingly, the flights from Madrid to Berlin (with a quick layover in Munich) passed fairly quickly and we soon found ourselves on the train from the airport into the city. We tried to find a quick bite to eat before checking in to our room and ended up at a restaurant called Burgermeister, which given that A) the hamburger was invented in Germany, B) this was the first restaurant we had found with vegetarian options for one of my travel companions, and that C) it was nearby the metro stop that would bring us to our Airbnb, we decided it was good enough for lunch.
After checking in and getting ready, we headed back out into the city, dismayed to find out that the sun sets at 4 PM and plunges the city into a darkness fitting for much later in the night. Nevertheless, we began exploring Berlin, first stopping at the Brandenburg Gate and taking a moment to reflect at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
Waiting for our entrance time into the Reichstag (the German Parliament,) we visited one of Berlin’s famous Christmas markets! It was wonderful to see the city all lit up for the holiday season and enjoy some hot chocolate on an otherwise freezing night!
We made our way back to the Reichstag and climbed to the top of the sphere that adorns the building, where we walked through a visual timeline of its history and looked out at the skyline.
Dinner was döner at a restaurant often visited by former Chancellor Angela Merkel—just like when I had it in Switzerland, I could not tell you what’s in it other than chicken, veggies, and some sort of sauce—clearly my German has not improved.
We took the metro back to our Airbnb and headed to bed for what was sure to be very sound sleep.
Saturday:
The day began at a cafe with pretzels, cookies and hot chocolate!
We then made our way to the Berlin Wall Museum, Berlin Wall Memorial, and the East Side Gallery, which provided a fascinating glimpse into the not-so-distant past and the style of Soviet oppression that has sadly regained relevance this year. Yet, it’s also a reminder of hope and the durability of dreams for freedom and democracy with the Wall now having been gone longer than it was ever up.
Our next stop was the Berliner Dom, a gorgeous church where we climbed up the 300 steps to the top of the dome for beautiful views of Berlin!
Having been diligently checking places off of our must-see list, we hadn’t realized that we had missed lunch. Rather than ruining our appetites for dinner with a late lunch, we opted to hold ourselves over with something light instead. Enter the German tradition of kuchenessen, an early evening slice of a cake! It has apparently waned in popularity over the years (how a tradition of eating cake could ever wane in popularity, I have no idea) but we had been tipped off by another friend of ours who had previously stayed with her grandparents in Berlin.
We spent the evening visiting Checkpoint Charlie, a checkpoint gate in the Berlin Wall where American and Soviet tanks once faced off, and the Topographies of Terror museum where the ruins of Secret State Police and Reich Main Security Office headquarters are located. It’s impossible not to feel uneasy going through the museum, the bombed-out remains of what were essentially office buildings of execution perfectly encapsulate the “banality of evil” in Nazi Germany.
That largely ended our night, but as we headed to dinner we passed by the Victory Column from one of the Prussian Wars in the 1800s, a bombed cathedral that was now hosting a Christmas market, and a theatre decked out in pretty Christmas lights!
Dinner was schnitzel (just as good as I remembered it) and then we headed back to our Airbnb and off to bed!
Sunday:
The usual long Sunday travel day got even longer today when there was a security breach during our layover in Munich. I think everything was under control by the time our flight had landed, but several fights had been canceled and delayed so our flight was then delayed as the airline tried to rebook other flights onto our plane. Other than taking a few more hours to leave, everything was fine and we made it back safely!
Hope y'all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!
Ich liebe und vermisse euch alle,
Bryce