It’s Sunday 3/8 at about 5pm, and I got back from Berlin at about 1 this afternoon. Wow, where to start. Berlin had to be one of the most interesting, beautiful, and eerie places I’ve ever experienced and may ever experience. We left on Friday at about 5am- didn’t get much sleep that night..haven’t slept much since last week for that matter. Anyway, it was my first experience with the budget airline Ryanair and although it’s budget I must say it was one of the easiest, most efficient means of air travel I’ve ever experienced. Both our flights, there and back, left exactly on schedule if not earlier and arrived earlier than scheduled. It has first-come, first-serve seats so if you’re in the end of the line you probably won’t sit with your friends, but we didn’t have a problem and sat together.

Basically it’s a ‘get the hell on the plane and just go’ sort of deal and personally I thought it was great. We were even airborne and the seatbelt sign went off in like 30 seconds I swear. We landed in Berlin after just under 2 hours, and even though I was exhausted I couldn’t sleep because a) I was too excited and b) the seats were plastic, didn’t recline, and the plane had a neon-yellow and blue color scheme that gave me a migraine. We get off the plane and it’s drizzling and chilly (you get off the plane and go down the steps to go outside) and start walking. Obviously, everything is in German. I had a paper with directions to the hostel along with other info, which of course I left in my room. But Mari did some research too and we made it relatively hassle-free into the city centre, which was about a 25 minute train ride. My first impression of Germany was a little bit eerie- the outskirts of Berlin are pretty dismal, graffiti is everywhere, and just looking around and thinking that that part of Germany was communist just 20 years ago gave me a weird feeling. We get off the train and immediately: buy pretzels. You have not eaten a pretzel until you’ve eaten one in Germany. They’re bigger than your face and the most delicious things eeeever. Until you try the pastries- streudels, croissants, oh. my. God. My heaven will most definitely include a German bakery.

ANYway, we leave the station and we’re in Alexanderplatz, which is right in the center of Berlin and close to our hostel. Which took us about an hour to find. I went up to about 3 people and none of them spoke English but pointed us in directions, and we were going to give up and buy a map when I spotted the street our hostel was on and we found it. We stayed at St. Christopher’s, which was a pretty nice hostel for 12 euro a night AND free breakfast. There was even a really nice bar downstairs where you could get food too. The five of us- me, Mari, Jeb, Zack, and this kid Sean, stayed in an 8 person room. We were the first ones there but we ended up with an Irish guy (ironic) who was traveling on his own and visiting a friend, and two American girls from Iowa who were a little out there. One of them has been living in Scotland for 6 months and works at a bakery there? and her friend was traveling around with her. They ended up being on our flight back to Shannon on Sunday, small world. Anyway, we couldn’t check in until 3 so they could “turn the sheets” (if they even do that) so we put our bags in the luggage room and decided to go on a 3 1/2 hour walking tour called the Third Reich, which was all about how Hitler came to power and the landmarks associated with him. It was absolutely freezing and a little rainy so that took away from it, but it was really interesting. We went around to a bunch of buildings: the current Parliament building which was rebuilt after Hitler had it burnt to the ground, blamed it on a communist, and ultimately from then on was given ultimate powers which he never gave back; stood on top of a former Nazi bunker where Hitler committed suicide- it’s now a parking lot and there’s nothing in reference to Hitler there at all; one of the few Synagogues which survived Kristalnaught but eventually half of it was bombed by Britain; one of the few remaining Nazi buildings which dealt with propaganda, and so much more. It really puts things in perspective to think how so many level-headed Germans could have allowed Hitler to do all the damage he did; it almost started to make sense after being reminded what conditions Germany underwent after WWI and all that. After the tour, we were all exhausted and some people napped while Jeb and I looked for an ATM and just walked around. Berlin is HUGE, but the quietest city I’ve ever been in- which also made it creepier. It’s built for 5 million but is only inhabited by about 3 million- there aren’t a lot of economic opportunities in the city still. It’s continuing to be built up though, but there are still huge areas of open space where bombing occurred and no building has taken place yet.

There were cranes all over the place though. Later we ate amazing burritos for dinner and joined a pub crawl- we went to 4 bars and a club. That night we realized 2 things: Berlin does NOT sleep, I think it even beats NY as the city that doesn’t sleep, and there really are very few laws. I think I saw one police car the entire time I was there. You can drink alcohol on the streets, prostitution is legal, and smoking in bars was legal which was very hard to deal with- I don’t think I could ever stay there a long period of time because of that. Every bar we went to we spent at least 20 minutes outside just to breathe. All my clothes reek of smoke. Also, I say it doesn’t sleep because most of the bars and clubs are open literally all night (the sign said closes at 8am), and we walked back at around 2am and it felt like it was maybe 7pm with the amount of people out. We walked past a hair salon and even that was still open.

The next day, we got up at around 9 to get our free breakfast of toast, cereal and coffee (what do you want for 12 euro a night), I ate so much of it I almost puked because I didn’t want to have to pay for too much food which is sad, and we went on a free walking tour of Berlin. These tours are run by young people who are impressively knowledgeable and they wear lanyards saying “the NEW Europe,” which is apparently a movement to promote tourism and learning about Europe in peaceful times. We walked again by the Brandenburg gate, where Hitler and the Nazis marched through when they took power, and it was part of the former Berlin wall, saw the memorial for the Jews in the Holocaust- which looked more like modern art than gravestones. It was impersonal, and it’s very controversial because of that- but I think it’s rightful in that the 6 million people who were killed are remembered but it’s not glorified in any way to acknowledge the fact that it’s a part of history that Germany is not proud of. I think Berlin deals with such a rocky past in a very good way- there are memorials to remember what happened so history is learned and not repeated, yet it’s subtle and let known that it’s not something that Berlin wants to keep hanging over its head, and instead move onwards and upwards. Regardless, it was surreal to be standing in a place where there is an incredible amount of history- the kind of stuff you learn over and over again in high school history class. We then went to see what remains of the wall and Checkpoint Charlie- which was was separated West and East Berlin during the Cold War. Then we left the tour because it was too damn cold and we saw a lot the previous day and walked around the city. We had to stop at every single kebab and/or bratwurst stand we saw because the guys needed to have one every single time. We went to Haagen-Daz, thinking it would be better in Germany..it wasn’t. But it was still good, I got a hot chocolate to warm me up and paid 50 cents to go to the bathroom. I was kind of relieved to see that it wasn’t only Ireland that made you pay to pee in the city, but it also was annoying and even MORE expensive in Berlin.

We saw some awesome, old cathedrals- only went inside one because the other one you had to pay for- and walked down to go up into the Reichstag, or Parliament building which has a glass dome on the top for views of the city. Which was shut down for maintenance starting the day we went. But we were still able to go up onto the roof after waiting about a half hour to get inside to see the city. Then we got on a bus to go back- the wrong bus. It took us all the way to the other side of the city, and thinking we could just stay on the bus as it would return to Alexanderplatz, some lady came on and said something like oogen schlatz nitzel frieden hamberugen schlurgen- aka get off the bus, now. We walked around the little mall that was there, since what else do you do when you’re lost in a city that doesn’t speak English, and got a something called a streudelslagen or something which was absolutely delicious. I have no idea how everyone isn’t obese with these bakeries on every corner. Then we found the right bus and got on to return to our hostel. I had dinner in the hostel downstairs while some others just had to have another one of those burritos, and we hung out there all night and met some Brits. Our flight this morning was at 11 so we had to get up at 745 to have our free breakfast and leave, even though we didn’t go to sleep until 2 anyway, just to be woken up a half hour later by other people in the hostel/snoring Sean, so I’m exhausted to say the least. So I’ll leave it at that.
Now it’s back “home” in Ireland and back to reality of school.
More again soon.