I actually didn't even know I was going on this weekend trip until Paige called me while I was in Switzerland and told me she bought me tickets to Berlin. I didn't know much about Berlin besides it was in Germany, but I'm never one to turn down a trip especially one with fun people so I enthusiastically waited for that weekend to arrive. Our trip didn't start out as smoothly as we anticipated. The train tickets that were purchased were purposely not Ceske Drahy, which is a Czech train company, because they often over book trains so people have to stand in the hallway. However, we found out when we arrived at the train station that the company we booked in connected to Ceske Drahy so we were going to end up on one of those trains. And guess what- it was overbooked and we ended up in the hallway. We walked up and down the multiple train cars, squeezing past other unfortunate people who didn't have seats trying to find unreserved seats. We were a group of 6 so we concluded we weren't going to find seats together and needed to split up and find single seats. So, we went off in separate directions searching for somewhere to sit. Paige and I were unlucky and couldn't find any so we sat ourselves down in the stairwell since we refused to stand for the 4 hour ride. Luckily, after about an hour, some people got off and seats cleared up so we were able to sit down in actual seats.
Our bad luck didn't end there though. When we got to the train station in Berlin, Germany, we had to take a short tram ride to our hostel. We went up to one of the self ticket machines to buy tickets for the ride and were trying to figure out how to change to language to English so we could find out which tickets we needed to buy. A man saw us struggling so he came up and asked if we needed help. We gratefully accepted his free help and he went to work pushing the buttons for the tickets we would need. He told us to buy reduced price group tickets since we were students and we would only need them for three stops. He told us they would be perfect, so with tickets in hand, we boarded our tram. We were just about to get off our last stop where we could actually see our hostel in the distance when a worker came on board to check tickets. He got to us and Kelsey confidently handed him our ticket. He took one look at the ticket and at us and said, "Come with me." We followed the worker off the tram, which was also our stop, and he told us we had the wrong ticket. Any tickets with the word reduced in front of them are children's tickets (13 and younger). He started demanding money from us. He told us that the fine was 60 euros each. We frantically told him we had no idea and someone had told us these were the right tickets. We offered to buy new correct tickets to make up for it, but he was having none of it. He then told us he couldn't accept card, cash only. We had literally just got to Germany so some of us hasn't even been to an ATM yet and didn't have enough euros. We were desperate for him to drop the fine. He finally said, "Fine, I'll let you pay 60 euros for all of you." So, one of my friends who had enough paid him and we then paid her back later when we got to the ATM. Wow, we were not off to a great start in Berlin.
Don't worry though, it only got better from there. We had a free walking tour scheduled for the next day and man was it completely worth it. It kicked off at the Brandenburg Gate, which was such an powerful monument. It was so crazy to walk under it because so many other famous people, both good and bad, such as Napoleon and Hitler, have walked through it as well.
We were able to see many other impressive sights during our tour such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Our tour guide didn't do any explaining before we entered the memorial because she wanted us to interpret it ourselves. It's basically a series of stone blocks of different heights next to each other. The ground is uneven, the corridors are so small only one person can fit in them at a time so you feel alone, you can't see around the corner so sometimes you run into people, it's quiet, but every once in a while you will hear someone else walking or talking (often in another language) so it is disorientating and confusing. It's a very powerful memorial because it's so unnerving and it makes you realize the feelings they had while in concentration camps were so so so worse than that.
Next, we got to see one of the only remaining pieces of the Berlin Wall still standing. It was so crazy hearing stories about individuals who got over the wall using such creative tactics. My favorite one was a man, his wife, and child went to the top of a very tall building by the wall, threw a hammer with a rope to the other side of the wall where family members were there to grab and secure it to something, and then zip lined across. They all made it unharmed.
We stopped briefly at Checkpoint Charlie, which was the best known crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin when the Berlin Wall was still up.
The last place we went was the square where one of the biggest bonfires where they burned Jewish books or books that had "Un-German spirit" took place. They have a memorial where you look down into a glass panel on the floor. You can see empty bookcases symbolizing all the books that were lost to the fire. Something really awesome as well is that they have converted the square into an outdoor library where you can borrow books from each other and get comfy on loads of sitting areas designated for reading.
We loved our free walking tour so much, we booked another tour (a paid one though) through the same company for the next day. Before then though, we walked through a beautiful park we randomly stumbled across and also went to see the Brandenburg Gate at night.
The next day we woke up fairly early to explore Berlin before our walking tour. We came across a church that looked like any ordinary church from the outside and decided to venture in. It turned out to be a church of zionism and it was way different from any other church we had been in before. The decorations were very simple, they had an art gallery on the side with very strange art, and the most bizarre thing was the music playing in the background. I don't know how to describe the music besides it being unnerving and with a lot of gongs. I very much enjoyed this experience though because I was able to learn a lot more about another religion by reading the pamphlets provided in the church and was able to see first hand how it was different to other churches I have been in before.
That afternoon we went on the Red Walking tour which focused on how communism affected Berlin. We were able to see many areas where the Berlin Wall used to stand, a museum which set up a model of how the Berlin Wall used to look, and many other interesting places.
It was also very educational to hear the more positive side of communism. There were actually many people who lived in East Berlin that preferred communism and didn't want the Wall to come down. I had never thought about how many people may have actually preferred life in communism. Some of those people were Thomas's parents. Thomas is Paige's friend and was a foreign exchange student at her high school. He still lives in Germany and we met up with him for dinner. He lives where East Berlin would have been and his parents were actually on the East side of the Berlin Wall when it came up. They liked life on the East side because they thought people were closer because they had more time to spend together and helped each other out more. They became a close community that is no longer that close now a days.
My time in Berlin was too short. I didn't realize how much there was to do in Berlin before going there and now realize you almost need a week to be able to see everything it has to offer. There is so much history from different decades, which makes it such an interesting city.