March 21st, 2014 (Friday)
After a MUDEC-sponsored wine tasting in Trier, Germany, Marisa, Kate, Gabrielle, and I headed out to Berlin, our weekend destination. We had two train changes, and since our first train going into Mannheim was eight minutes late, we missed our first connection. Thanks to my Rail Planner app, we found another train going to the same place, so we hopped on that (sprinted to it, actually). This plan ended up working out better because we didn't have a two-hour layover for our second connection like we thought we would. We got onto our main train, the 7 hour one we had seat reservations for, without any problems, which was the most important part.
March 22nd, 2014 (Saturday)
We arrived in Berlin at about 7:00 on Saturday morning. We had a very German breakfast consisting of train station McDonald's before going to the Reichstag to get tickets to go up in the dome later that night. After we got our tickets, we headed out to our hostel, called St. Christopher's, to drop off our luggage before we embarked on a two and a half hour free walking tour. The walking tour was absolutely amazing, and we covered so much ground in such a short amount of time. After meeting at the Brandenburg Gates, we saw a Holocaust memorial, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Ministry of Ministries, French and German churches, a concert house, the museum district, and the Berlin Cathedral. We also stood above Hitler's bunker, where he hid out at the end of World War II and eventually committed suicide. Our tour guide was also telling us about how after the war and the city was destroyed, Berlin had to depend on its women citizens to rebuild everything since too many men had died or were injured during the war. The women got the city back on its feet, which I thought was so cool. (He even told us about how a group of women volunteered to rebuild an airport and finished it by hand after only six weeks...he then told us a group of men are currently building an airport and they are over two years behind.)
After a MUDEC-sponsored wine tasting in Trier, Germany, Marisa, Kate, Gabrielle, and I headed out to Berlin, our weekend destination. We had two train changes, and since our first train going into Mannheim was eight minutes late, we missed our first connection. Thanks to my Rail Planner app, we found another train going to the same place, so we hopped on that (sprinted to it, actually). This plan ended up working out better because we didn't have a two-hour layover for our second connection like we thought we would. We got onto our main train, the 7 hour one we had seat reservations for, without any problems, which was the most important part.
March 22nd, 2014 (Saturday)
We arrived in Berlin at about 7:00 on Saturday morning. We had a very German breakfast consisting of train station McDonald's before going to the Reichstag to get tickets to go up in the dome later that night. After we got our tickets, we headed out to our hostel, called St. Christopher's, to drop off our luggage before we embarked on a two and a half hour free walking tour. The walking tour was absolutely amazing, and we covered so much ground in such a short amount of time. After meeting at the Brandenburg Gates, we saw a Holocaust memorial, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Ministry of Ministries, French and German churches, a concert house, the museum district, and the Berlin Cathedral. We also stood above Hitler's bunker, where he hid out at the end of World War II and eventually committed suicide. Our tour guide was also telling us about how after the war and the city was destroyed, Berlin had to depend on its women citizens to rebuild everything since too many men had died or were injured during the war. The women got the city back on its feet, which I thought was so cool. (He even told us about how a group of women volunteered to rebuild an airport and finished it by hand after only six weeks...he then told us a group of men are currently building an airport and they are over two years behind.)
After our tour, we went to a small cafe for lunch and got bagel sandwiches. Once we finished eating, we went back to the Reichstag, where we climbed to the top of the dome and watched the sunset. It had been rainy and overcast that day, but you could still see the bright pink sun set over the clouds and it was absolutely gorgeous. We probably stayed up there about forty minutes before we went back to the main train station (about a ten minute walk) and grabbed some Chinese food, something we had all gone without the past two months and were really missing. Then, we headed out to a pub crawl sponsored by our hostel. I had never done a pub crawl, so I didn't know what to expect, but this definitely wasn't it. I was expecting a group of maybe 10 or 15 people...there were over 75. We then went to five different bars: two that were pretty chill, a dance club, a reggae bar, and we finished up at a massive night club. We all had a blast.
(Oh, and remember when that mean French man in Paris made fun of my French? Well, I have redeemed myself. There was a very attractive and about 95% naked (he had just gotten out of the shower) twenty-something year old French guy in our hostel room who said my French (which was basically me introducing myself and saying the days of the week -- still counts) was fantastic.)
March 23rd, 2014 (Sunday)
The four of us woke up early on Sunday morning and grabbed breakfast at the hostel, where we ran into a couple of drunk Swedish guys, one of whom gave me some great life advice about finding a job that basically was: "if you want things enough, you do things to get them, and you end up good like me." After reluctantly pulling ourselves away from this intellectually stimulating conversation, we checked out of our hostel before heading out on a 45-minute metro ride to Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum, a concentration camp used by Nazis in World War II. I didn't want to take pictures of the actual camp, so I'll try my best to describe it: it was enormous, much larger than I thought it would be. There was a big monument dedicated to those who died in the camp, and there were some masonry barracks you could walk through, along with a couple small museums where you could learn more about the concentration camp and how the Soviets used it after the war. You could also see the remains of Station Z, which was the building where the camp's prisoners were executed. We only had about an hour and a half there since we had a 1:00 train to catch back to Luxembourg, so we got audio guides to try to learn as much as possible. One thing I found really interesting in the worst of ways was that during Christmas, the Nazi soldiers working at the camp would take the gallows out of the holes in the ground and put Christmas trees in them. It was a somber note to end a wonderful weekend on, but I'm glad I went because it was a very eye-opening experience that I think everyone should have.
March 23rd, 2014 (Sunday)
The four of us woke up early on Sunday morning and grabbed breakfast at the hostel, where we ran into a couple of drunk Swedish guys, one of whom gave me some great life advice about finding a job that basically was: "if you want things enough, you do things to get them, and you end up good like me." After reluctantly pulling ourselves away from this intellectually stimulating conversation, we checked out of our hostel before heading out on a 45-minute metro ride to Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum, a concentration camp used by Nazis in World War II. I didn't want to take pictures of the actual camp, so I'll try my best to describe it: it was enormous, much larger than I thought it would be. There was a big monument dedicated to those who died in the camp, and there were some masonry barracks you could walk through, along with a couple small museums where you could learn more about the concentration camp and how the Soviets used it after the war. You could also see the remains of Station Z, which was the building where the camp's prisoners were executed. We only had about an hour and a half there since we had a 1:00 train to catch back to Luxembourg, so we got audio guides to try to learn as much as possible. One thing I found really interesting in the worst of ways was that during Christmas, the Nazi soldiers working at the camp would take the gallows out of the holes in the ground and put Christmas trees in them. It was a somber note to end a wonderful weekend on, but I'm glad I went because it was a very eye-opening experience that I think everyone should have.