Berlin, Part 1

Berlin-

Berlin is a pretty awesome city. So far, I think the most disappointing thing was the weather. I’ve gotten so used to having beautiful weather, that I almost forgot (except the chill of course) about the fact that Fall is here, and Winter is almost here! Yesterday, we got in around 2, and checked into the hostel. Its really cool actually, and we have HUGE beds! The hostel itself is such a cool place to hang out! The common area has a sports bar-ish feel to it. They even have the NFL channel! Sadly, since today marks the end of Daylight Savings in the US, we’re back to being 9 hours ahead, and the Seahawks game isn’t until 1am our time! After eating at the hostel (they have some pretty awesome burgers, and they have wings too. Kelly got the “suicide wings” and totally was amazing and finished them ALL! She definitely said she’s never getting those again though! Still! The girl is amazing! We went to two museums after lunch. The first had all sorts of old artifacts from the middle east, largely Mesopotamia. They had roman architecture, and old greek architecture! They had pieces to an altar and the façade of the front of the temple had pictures of Athena, Zeus, and Eros on it! I do love greek mythology! They also had a ton of old Indian (or what was old india) tapestries, and doors and stuff! It was soooo beautiful! You HAVE to take a look at the pictures I’ll be posting! The second museum was called the DDR museum, but, sadly, it wasn’t a museum dedicated to Dance, Dance Revolution. Cause I would have been amazing. And beat everyone! Lol!! It was the museum of the Deutcheland Democratic Republik. Or the German Democratic Republic. It was such a cool museum though! It was so interactive! They had games you could play, and you could sit in a prison cell, and an interrogation room. They had an old Volvo you could sit in (although I didn’t need to: My dad used to have a 1977 Volvo!) and clothes you could put on! It was so amazing!

After that last museum, and 5 hours of travelling, we were tired. It was about 730 pm, and we were so ready to end the walking around part! We walked almost all the way back to the hostel, and split up for dinner. I went to the hostel to use the internet and we went to meet up with some of the people in the Berlin CHID study abroad group! The girl we met took us out to a bar, but it was SOOO packed! We literally were packed in like sardines! In the business, we lost the girl, and went on in search of our own place. I was hungry by this point (it was almost 11) so Mike and I went in search of Ice cream and cheap German food. Weirdly enough, it was actually really hard to find cheap food. You don’t have the abundance of street food or small shops here. Each place we went to was either not serving anymore and/or it cost at least 10€ a plate, just for the food! So between buying a beer with dinner, and the exchange rate, we would be spending probably around $18USD for dinner! Sooo much! In the Czech Republic, I feel bad for spending $10 a day on food! Such a difference.  We ended up at Mcdonalds because we knew they’d have ice cream, and we got Twix McFlurries! And they couldn’t add extra twix for me. I want to find a place in the US that has Twix McFlurries!  We had some chicken nuggets, and decided to go back to the hostel, where we met up with some of our group, and headed off to bed.

This morning, we woke up, and met up with the group at 930. We walked to a shop named Fat Tire (just like the beer) and got our bike rental  and our bike tour guide. It was so much fun! We rode around the city for about 4 hours, plus a lunch break. We had lunch next to the Berlin Zoo, which has more species than any other zoo in the world! They even had Flamingos, which I’ve never actually seen a live flamingo.  I totally got a T-Shirt. It says “Our Motto is: Walking is stupid.” And on the back has the Fat Tire logo, which also looks surprisingly like the beer. We ran to catch a bus, and went onto the parliament. Apparently, people used to just line up in front of the building, thousands of people, and they’d get in, but then there was a threat of a suicide bomber, so now you have to go through this crazy security. It was worse than the airport! The tour there was actually really boring, but I think it was just because of the tour guide, and the fact that it was warm, and we were all really tired from bike riding all around berlin. After the parliament tour, where we got to go up this huge dome and see all of Berlin, we went to this amazing place called “Caffe e Gelato” and got HUGE ice creams!!! They were AMAZING! Pictures are posted of those!

We came back to the hostel full of ice cream, and tired. After hanging out for a bit, people started going out, but I didn’t really feel like partying or anything with an energetic atmosphere, so after a while, I decided to go walk around the city. I grabbed my ipod, and my book (The Jokeby Milan Kundera. Assigned reading, but very good.) and walked around the city for a good hour and a half. I found this place that sold “currywurst” which is just like a deep fried hot dog, with curry sprinkled on top. With a beer, it came to 3,80, which is actually a pretty good price. And back to the hostel I came! I’m actually really proud of myself for navigating the ü Bahn without any problems! It can be extremely difficult.

Anyways, I’m about to go through pictures, so I’ll write more later!

See you later, faithful readers!