How's it going everyone?! First off prost is German for cheers so you now know another new language. Anyway this weekend I headed off for my second to last trip of study abroad (crying as I type that). Early on Friday morning, aka 4am, my friends and I traveled by taxi to Dublin airport. I might as well rent a bed there for the month of November considering how often I've been there! We discovered the Aer Lingus app had mobile check-in so we had boarding passes on our iPhones and breezed through security. After the mandatory coffee stop (I travel with a gang of caffeine addicts) it was finally time to board. I managed to catch some z's on the plane. If I hadn't, day 1 would have been struggle city. Berlin, like most other European cities has a ballin' metro system so we decided to be truly adventurous and navigate it blindly to our AirBnB. For those of you who don't know what an AirBnB is, it's basically someone privately owns an apartment and rents it out to travelers through the website. It's much nicer than a hostel and about the same price! We ended up having a penthouse type set up in one of the nicest apartments I've ever seen! Here's a link if you wanna check it out. If you're ever in Berlin and need a place to stay I highly recommend it. The only downside was the lack of elevator. It felt like we were climbing a mountain every time we got home. Our friend Catherine had flown in from Paris a little earlier than us and was waiting for our arrival. After regrouping for a few minutes we ventured to this market to meet up with Catherine's friends who were studying in Berlin. It was sweet to have our own tour guide who knew his way around and even spoke a little German. We went to the local grocery store and grabbed some beers. The beautiful part about Berlin is there are no open container laws (more on this later) so we casually strolled along the river drinking our Schofferhoffer admiring the city. You may be wondering if it was cold in Berlin? Well it was. About 35-40 degrees Fahrenheit while we were there but for the most part we didn't notice. For a late lunch we grabbed some burgers because, let's be real I'm essentially trying one in every country. The boys offered to cook us dinner at their apartment so we had those plans ironed out but wanted to get a little culture in on the first day. One of the girls I was with is a history major and we were totally geeking out over being in Germany. I've always had a strange fascination with WWII and Holocaust history. Anyway we headed over the Jewish History Museum which is designed with very deliberate architecture and exhibits. It was full of artifacts from actual people involved in the holocaust and persecution. It was so powerful. Everywhere you looked there was another art exhibit with a deep meaning linking to anti-Semitic themes. My favorite part was the garden of exile where there are these tall stones on slanted ground that make you feel dizzy and disoriented. It's hard to explain but it certainly is representative of the way Jews felt in Nazi Germany. After exploring the rest of the halls we headed to the boys' apartment where they had laid out quite the luxurious spread from a cheese tray with wine and a bangin stir fry. We certainly were living the high life this weekend. The plan was originally to have dinner and then head to a bar or club. Well that didn't happen. Our host ended getting a little too drunk and somehow took us to a random house party in the middle of Berlin. The best part was we thought that he knew the people but a few minutes in we learned that we were completely alone! We evacuated from there fairly quickly but still hilarious. We stopped at one more place before cabbing it back to our place. Speaking of cabbing it, god bless all the kind Germans who called big vans for us since we were a group of five and couldn't fit in a standard cab. The next morning we woke up determined to get a lot done. We had breakfast and coffee and this bagel place which was sweet because we don't get a lot of bagels in Dublin or Paris. From there we tried to take the metro to the Berlin Wall which was where our first and only bit of trouble happened. So in Berlin you have to validate your metro ticket before boarding but apparently one of us did it wrong and the secret metro police who were so shady and undercover made us get off and charged our poor friend Madeline 40euro! So lame, but again one for the record books. We ended up making it to the wall which is really intense. All along the top at various points there's these ghoul like statues but the wall itself is cool covered in interesting art pieces and messages.
From the wall we found this really cool store full of handmade rings and retro things. The girl working there had just moved to Berlin from Maine and gave us great advice on how to get to Checkpoint Charlie. Off we went! After stopping at Starbucks (caffeine addicts I swear!) we saw the checkpoint which is actually just a little booth in the middle of the street. We got kinda annoyed when we realized the "American" soldiers were actually German totally mocking our servicemen and taking some risqué photos with tourists with our flag. We stopped at the souvenir shop so I could get some postcards and headed back to the apartment to plan the rest of the evening. We eventually formulated an itinerary that started off at the Kadawe, the largest department store in Europe. This place was massive. The whole bottom floor was all luxury stores that I could never even dream of affording but we worked our way through and ended up at the restaurant at the top and ate dinner overlooking the street. Then we decided we wanted to go to the top of the Television Tower. It's one of the biggest landmarks in Berlin and was built by the soviets. When we got off the metro though we stumbled upon a 5 euro cocktail place which is just too good to pass up. After enjoying the first mojito we realized we could get one to go. Literally we were five American girls strolling the streets of Berlin with Mojitos! So euro! The tower itself wasn't too hard to navigate to as you can see it from almost everywhere. The elevator takes you 260 meters up in about 40 seconds and the top is a 360 panoramic view of the city. So breathtaking. There was a bar up there so we hung out for a while just hanging out and talking about life.
After that we were gonna go home to get an early jump on our last day but ended up in a club for a little bit which was an experience no doubt. It was mostly older people ordering bottle service of Absolut. Seriously go big or go home folks, but we had a great time dancing and enjoying life.
One our last morning in the apartment we all packed up our backpacks and headed out to explore Museums and the bigger tourist attractions. We had the most questionable breakfasts known to man ranging from an Irish breakfast to pizza. We're an eclectic bunch no doubt. From the breakfast place it was only a short walk to museum island which is where the national art gallery and all that jazz is. Honestly it was nothing special so we moved on. Once on the other side of the river some of the group stopped in the German History Museum to utilize the coat check for their bags. I just had one backpack (I'm becoming a really efficient packer!) so I carried it with me all day. We continued down the road to the Brandenburg Gate and took some obligatory tourist pics. Then we hung a left and ended up at the Holocaust Memorial which was awesome. There was a free museum underneath so of course we explored it. I could have stayed there all day reading the stories of those poor souls. Definitely a moving experience. A pit stop was need after that so we grabbed coffee. I finally found a Dunkin in Europe so of course I had iced coffee. I don't care how cold it was outside, you don't understand the struggle of trying to find ice anywhere in Europe. It's just not a thing. After the delicious DD break we walked down to the Reichstag which is the German parliament building. It was crazy to think we were looking at places that Adolf Hitler had been, as well as thinking how different the city would have looked even 25 years ago. The building itself is huge and imposing, a true must see. We knew we had to start heading to the airport soon so we hiked back to the German History Museum where the bags were checked. We had time to kill so we explored in there a little. I went and saw a killer exhibit called The Eyes of War which told the story of around 40 people who had been blinded in the war or shortly after from ammunition left around by troops fleeing. The stories were really sad as all of the blindings were just accidents. Most of the time when these people were kids they just didn't know that their "toys" were actually deadly weapons. It was truly heartbreaking. Finally we headed via metro back to the airport. I broke the tradition of having McDonald's in every country but did end up with some ballin Burger King. Let me just take this time to say how horrifying the Berlin airport is. It's a thousand degrees inside with no where to sit. Literally people just sprawled on the floor everywhere you looked. It was torturous to have to sit in there for a few hours. Thankfully though I got on the plane and sat next to a lovely Irish woman who gave me gum and offered me lots of snack. She wanted to hear all about studying in Ireland and what I thought about it. It was just another reminder of why I love this country so much. You won't find friendlier people or a more warm atmosphere. As the last days of my semester are winding down I'm full of so many conflicting emotions. I'm going to miss it here more than I could ever express in words on this blog. But I try not to think about the little countdown ticking away at the right of the screen. I still have plenty of time to love it up. I'll be back.
From Dublin with Love.
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