Berlin

Sorry to all of you who have been checking up and have found nothing new on my blog. I been strained for time and, as you can tell, have not posted for a while; my apologies.

The story starts on Thursday when John and I head to Edinburgh to catch our flight to Frankfurt-Hahn. We had been sucked into this trip a month before by these two girls; one of which said she “knew” someone in Frankfurt. We said, alright it will be a fun trip before we set off to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day. About three days before we leave, the girls decide that they want to go to Berlin instead. That’s fine, I guess, there’s more to do in Berlin anyways. So we find the cheapest way to travel from Frankfurt to Berlin by using a ride share. This means we ride with someone who is taking that journey, which is convenient and, as we found out, fun. To make the story short, they stayed in Frankfurt one night and then took a nine hour bus ride to Berlin and beat us there by only a couple hours when we started a day later and paid way less.

Anyway, we found this ride share place and were finally on our way to Berlin. We had the opportunity to ride along with a guy who lives in Berlin but works in Frankfurt during the week. We also had two other guys with us, one of which was very entertaining. It took us five hours but it really didn’t seem that long because we heard some great stories to keep us amused.

When we arrived we found our hostel and then tried to find a bit to eat; a hard thing to do in a city with “wild” night life. The following morning we enjoyed a German strudel while we waited for our tour to begin (where I met another group of Illinois students). The tour of Berlin was very good. We saw the Wall, Check Point Charlie, the Holocaust Memorial, and many other historic sites. Then, John and I wandered around the city until it was time for us to meet up with the girls for dinner. We ate at a very small and very authentic German pub. The food and beer was very good; I had sauerkraut and sausage.

The five of us enjoyed an old-school pub crawl in Berlin’s less touristy section. It was very interesting, but very scary at the same time. I felt bad, because the next morning they had to ship off for another nine hour bus ride while we enjoyed more of the wonderful city (more of the Wall and other historical sites). That evening we met a couple of soldiers who were stationed in Germany...interesting to say the least.

Early on Sunday morning, we took a train to Frankfurt, a bus to the airport, and then a plane to Dublin. Although I only spent two whole days in Berlin I really loved it. It was, quite possibly, my favorite city thus far. It was so clean, had so much history, and did not feel like a big city what so ever. But my weekend was not over yet, so I’ll see you for St. Patties Day!