Berlin Day One

Well today started later then I thought it would. I was up fairly late last night (ok so half past midnight is not late, but I was really tired from two short nights the days before) planning my week in Berlin. I wanted to make sure I got to do everything I wanted to do, so I marked on the map the places I would like to go to. I then grouped things together each day so I can do that and others along the way hopefully getting it all done. So I tried to get up at seven am, but I was too tired, so I set my alarm for eight hoping an hour would make a difference. It did, so I got up and around and headed down to see what I could do for breakfast. I arrived downstairs and found out that it would cost me almost 10 Euros for a basic breakfast, I decided to skip hotel breakfast and run to the supermarket that was nearby and buy some food and snacks to have in the room (I have a mini fridge so it will help with not eating out three times a day, and instead just once a day). I got some bread, butter, turkey meat, cola, chips, water, gummie bears, apples, and grape juice (I haven’t had this in forever!) and headed back to the hotel to eat some breakfast before heading out.

It was about a quarter till ten when I finally headed out for the day. I decided to do a day of walking tour to places in the area that my hotel is. I started out with walking towards the Jewish Museum designed by architect, Daniel Libeskind. It was amazing, I don’t think words could do it justice, I just hope my pictures do. I spent about two hours exploring the museum including the special exhibit on Freud.

Afterwards I headed towards Check Point Charlie, which is the entrance to the American Sector of Berlin before the Berlin Wall came down. I had someone take my picture with the only remaining part, the control hut.

Next I headed a couple blocks away to the Topographie des Terrors which was the site of three terrifying Nazi institutions had their headquarters. The three places that had their headquarters there were the security service, Gestapo, and Heinrich Himmler had his residence there. There is no longer buildings on the site, it is just a field, but underground there is still the cellars where during WWII prisoners where interrogated and tortured. I couldn’t go into the cellars since they are under construction. There was also a small stretch of the Berlin Wall still standing there, my first of probably many.

Next I headed towards the Brandenburger Tor, or Gate, which is a place in history for Berlin that has had many rulers and statesmen, military parades and demonstrations that have walked through its arches. It is also the site of many modern Embassies that flank around the Pariser Plaza, which because of the world cup, had a HUGE football (soccer ball for all us Americans) in the middle of the plaza.

I started to get hungry, so I decided to head down Unter Den Linden, a huge street that has many embassies, shops, restaurants, a university, and historical buildings. As I walked down, I kept reading signs out of the restaurants to see their range of prices that I thought would be decent. I found a place that I liked and picked a table outside under an umbrella. I order spaghetti and cola light and enjoyed my meal a lot (ok so it’s not German food, but it’s hard, almost all the places seemed to have Italian like dishes, or just way too expensive for my budget).

After lunch I continued down Unter Den Linden and ended up at the end of the street at a university and some other historical buildings. In the middle of the plaza Bebel, there was an exhibition of United Buddy Bears (www.buddy-bear.com) that has been to many countries over the past four years. I found the United States bear in a heart beat, depicting our dear Statue of Liberty in bear form and smiled at the fact that the United Kingdom was right next to it. I had someone take my picture next to our bear and headed around to see the many countries and their bears. I took some pictures of my favorite bears including a few special bears that were made for a specific ideal versus a country. I then headed towards Gendarmenmarkt where I ate dinner last night, and ended up finding a beautiful neo-gothic church on the way. It was free entry so I decided to go in and explore it a bit. The church is Friedrichs-Werdersche Kirche and was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel which now houses a museum.

I continued on towards Gendarmenmarkt and walked around the plaza, unfortunately the church that I noticed last night is closed on Mondays, so I’ll have to come back another day to see the interior of it.

I went back to the hotel for a nap, it was a little after three making it the hottest part of the day and I was feeling it. After my nap, I decided that I would picnic in a park that didn’t seem too far away from the way it looked on the map. It turned out to be a 45 minute walk to this park, but it was nice to sit on rocks by the waterfall in the park and eat my dinner. I then read my Czech in a Nutshell book for a while and decided to head back before it got too late. I packed up my remaining food and my stuff and headed back.

The day would have been a perfect one (especially since the weather called for thunderstorms and there wasn’t a single rain cloud in the sky, just white cotton candy) if it wasn’t for what I found when I came back to the hotel. I opened my bad to get stuff out and found out that my strawberries had leaked! I had strawberry juice all over all my books, it soaked one of my guide books and got the edges of the others. I was a little sad, it even had some on the very bottom of my Czech in a Nutshell book. I set my books up to dry so hopefully the pages won’t stick together and cleaned my bag to my best ability. Hopefully it won’t feel stick in the morning, or I’ll be backpacking it for the rest of the week.

Well I am fairly tired, so I think I’m going to use my hour on the net and then watch a movie and head to bed. I have another day planned tomorrow, but with how long it took me today to do everything, I might have to come up with something else to do in the evening. Bis morgen!

***will add pictures later