i <3 berlin!

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church & Brandenburg Gate

Victory Column (Siegessäule) & German Parliament Building

German Flag & Brandenburg Gate

Checkpoint Charlie & Demonstration happening at Checkpoint Charlie...

Police surrounding protesters pre-rally and walking past on street...

lines of police vehicles ready to control crazy demonstrators... victory column

small section of berlin wall still standing... parliament with dominoes ready to go...

i was really into the domino art... great idea... :)

on the boat tour

yes more dominos... they had over a thousand!

domino with nutella painted on it!!! :) and the city had lots of bears around the city painted...

holocaust memorial very neat and moving...

more of the memorial and pieces of the wall with historical info...

manhole cover with all the landmarks and finally on the boat tour with new friends!

let me first say that i had only planned to go to berlin because the ESN group had set up a cheap trip to go.... thought it would be fun to hang out with 90 international students in general no matter where we would end up going... however... all i can say is wow i love berlin and i never expected to even like it at all!

Day 1

we had to get up early on friday morning to be at the bus station at 7:30am... icky! the worst part was the fact that the bus didn't arive until after 8 and then we got off to a late start leaving around 8:20... there were too many people on the first bus that i got seperated from krista but i think it was a good thing.. i got to go on the other bus with my friend sophie (whom i met on the copenhagen ESN trip) she is from france and one of the most funny people i know!

the total bus ride from odense to berlin takes around 8 straight hours of driving.... we had our first break at the border for some border shoping (tax free fun)... here you can find tons of candy and alcohol as well as other items but mostly candy and alcohol! we found the biggest tub of nutella equaling 5kg or 11pounds!!! it made my 'large' 1000g (2.2 pound) look tiny! after the boarder store we hopped back on the bus for another chunk of driving... we ended up stoping again somewhere between hamberg and berlin...

one thing i'm still adjusting to about europe and travel in europe is the fact that most places have a toll for using the wash room... at this particular stop krista and i discovered these really funny toilets... they actually swirled the seat around and cleaned it as part of the flushing process... because it was so funny we had to take a video to share with others like yourself... it was worth paying to see it... haha... the little amusing things in life!

enduring another long chunk of bus ride... i slept most of the way because there wasn't much else to do... i tired to do my homework but it also just put me to sleep!

once we got into berlin it took a while to get to our hostel... we found out that somewhere in the communications back and forth with the hostel that the reservation for 90 people was made for the year 2010 rather than 2009... oops! it took over an hour to sort out but we ended up getting rooms for friday night at least but there weren't enough for saturday... so we got off onto a rough unknown start but that didn't stop us from having fun...

krista and i joined up with a large group of people (mostly people we didn't know) to walk around the city that night... we started by passing the zoo and aquarium along the way we saw the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church which shows the destruction of WWII to The Victory Column (Siegessäule) in the middle of the teirgarden (the large center garden).

after walking to the victory column we headed toward the brandenburg gate and the german parlament building... both so amazingly beautiful at night.... plus it was quite chilly but clear and lovely!!! it was at this point that we first saw the city's plans for the 20 years later celebration of the berlin wall's falling... see this website to see the art dominos that fell on monday the 9th as a symbolic falling of the wall... http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/11/08/berlin-wall-anniversary.html

krista and i split from the large group to do some exploring of our own... we got to see the brandenberg gate up close along with the hotel where michael jackson dangled his baby out the balcony... we passed by the holocost memorial and through the famous potstammer platz where we saw a cute little christmas market... while trying to walk back to the hostel we ran into our french friends sophie and cyrielle who were also heading back... together we headed back to our hostel however we ended up taking one street that apparently was the street where the prostitutes hung out... we saw about 20 of them all along this street... it wasn't the best street we could've ended up on but we were fine and got to the hostel soon after... we decided to catch some sleep for the night after getting back we had an early day ahead of us...

Day 2

with all the drama from last night we got off to a latter start with the group on saturday morning... we finally came to a plan that we would be staying in berlin until 10 pm that night... someone said that there was the celebration of the wall falling (20th anniversary of the berlin wall falling) was happening that night... we found out later that they were wrong and that everything was going to happen on monday night the actual day of the falling of the wall...

we started out with the entire group walking around the city... we went through the teirgarten again and to the victory tower followed by the brandenburg gate and the parliament building...

but today all of the dominos were in place and people were everywhere enjoying the art... we followed the group up to one of the universities and then to the town square... we had to quickly grab lunch following because we were headed on a boat tour that afternoon... it was such a mess getting through all of the people going from one side of the brandenburg gate to the other... because they had so much closed off for the celebration...

we weren't sure if we were going to make it to the boat tour on time but we lucked out and it was closer than we realized to the parliament building... :) we went through the canals checking out berlin from a new view... the pictures are the most explanatory.... we were able to look around the city on our own after that... krista and i decided to head through the holocaust memorial to checkpoint charlie... while at checkpoint charlie we ran into a political demonstration/protest... they were rallying before heading out through the streets... because everything was in german i didn't understand what they were protesting but i was actually scared... they tell you that one of the big rules about traveling abroad is to never get involved with a demonstration.... i was happy to stay out of the way until they went through to the other streets... you wouldn't believe the amount of police they had to make sure everything was kept under control... they also had 8 large vans that could probably hold 20 people each following behind so if they needed to round people up at any point... it was like all the movies... crazy...

after checkpoint charlie we headed to dinner... krista and i decided to split off from the people we ran into at checkpoint charlie to do our own things... we grabbed dinner at this really cool australian restaurant at potstammer platz.... afterwards we walked around checking out more of the dominos before heading back to the hostel to meet th bus... we used the subway system to get back... i love how easy it is, it also makes me feel like a real city traveler!

it was nice to get to the bus and get a chance to have some down time after so much walking and cramming in city seeing... it then took us 4 hours to get to hamburg and we didn't get to bed at the hostel until 3am... which basically sucked.... but we survived... we were able to have a few hours at hamburg walking around... it was nice to see the city again i didn't think i'd ever be back but we did! :) we had to just walk around until 1 because the shops didn't open until then... and they were only open because christmas is coming up... but it was fun to power shop once they did open... we hopped on the bus at 2:30 that afternoon and headed back home...

it was a nice trip and like i said it was great city!!! i could spend even more time there given the chance! :D

two videos for your viewing fun... one silly and one a little more tense... enjoy!