We took our first trip out of Maastricht and into Germany.
Our trip was full of history, beautiful sites, culture, and shopping. Of course
with any initial trip, there’s going to be some successes and learning
experiences. This is going to be a long post with another post coming soon for Sunday.
Our trip started 60 days before we left. We knew that we
wanted to take some trips and heard about
blind
booking from a past exchange student. You choose a group of cities for 66 €
round trip and then they show you what city you get after you confirm your
purchase. Our flight was set out of Cologne, Germany and we found out we were
going to Berlin!
We had to stay overnight in Cologne because our flight was at 7am. We were able to see Kölner Dom (#4 on
this
list of
churches) at night but not up close. I’m very excited to go back and see it up close during the
Christmas market season. We grabbed something to eat and were excited to see
that English was on the menus. Yeah! We knew what we’re ordering.
On Friday, when we arrived we took the train to the
Sachenhausen
Concentration Camp which I’ve already blogged about. After the camp we went
to the city center, saw the Brandenburg Gate and then walked through Tiergarten
Park. The sun was coming out at that time so it was a nice relaxing stroll to
our hotel.
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| Sony Center |
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| Neue National Gallary |
After check in we headed back out in the direction of the
city center. We stumbled on an interesting site at the Neue National Gallary.
We also found the Sony Center were we stopped to eat dinner for the night.
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| Me infront of the Brandenburg Gate!! |
Next up was a display celebrating the upcoming 25
th
anniversary for the fall of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz. We also went on
to see the Brandenburg Gate at night.
Saturday was going to be another long day, with a lot of
walking, so we started off with breakfast at Einstein Café and then headed to
the city center for our free tour by
Sandemans New
Europe. Sadie, our tour guide, was a self-proclaimed history buff and told
us some interesting stories and facts about Berlin. We started off at the Brandenburg Gate, saw the Hotel Adlon,
and the US embassy in the square and wound through the city for 3 hours.
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| We started our tour in Pariser Platz. |
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Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Honors more than 6 million murdered during The Holocaust. |
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| Original parts of the Berlin wall |
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| Checkpoint Charlie |
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| Französischer Dom |
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| Konzerthaus Berlin (Yes it's a concert house) |
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| Deutscher Dom (look familiar?) |
Our
guide left us with some words to think about. Berlin and Germany was the
setting for some horrible crimes, but they are moving forward and ready for an
exciting future filled with culture, optimism, and peace.
After the tour we went back through a few sites and went
into the Topography of Terror. This museum was very interesting but Olivia and
I were ready for the “new” Berlin and to not live in the past anymore so we
decided to go to the shopping district.
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| Topography of Terror |
I was excited about shopping because with
all of the walking, my feet were hurting and I was hoping to find some boots. The
shopping area was long and populated with several big name shops. At the end of
the area was Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche.
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| Left in ruins as a memorial to the horrors of war. |
We finished up our Saturday night with an authentic German Restaurant. Marjellchen had great reviews and my East Prussian special of stewed meat of pork with prunes and yeast dumpling was delicious.
Check out our final day and some learning experiences from the trip in my next blog. You can access it
here.
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