First Free Weekend

Berlin is huge and filled with so much history. I spent my first free weekend with Sarah. It was great being with her. We visited the Berlin zoo, it was huge, the animals where so active, it was my best zoo experience ever. I also got a recording of a pooping polar bear!!! I probably shouldn’t be too proud of that, but I am!!
We stopped by a Christmas market and shared a shokolate crepe, it was amazing, so so good. Of course the Christmas market was pretty and cool too. We explored a shopping center and along the way took lots of pictures with the Berlin bear statues that are all over the city.

On Sunday we took the Underground Subway all the way to the Olympic Stadium and took a guided tour, we got to sit in the VIP chairs, and had a look at the locker rooms among other things.

We visited the Jewish Museum and the Checkpoint Charlie museum as well. Both museums offered interesting and humbling displays. For example at the Jewish Museum there is a tower, called the holocaust tower, in which you go in to have a taste of what it was like to be imprisoned. It was terrifying, the room was as cold as the temperature outside over 30 feet high and the only light came from a slit in the concrete walls at the very top. All I could do was stare at the light while fighting the urge to panic. I took comfort from the fact that Sarah was only a couple of feet away from me. This experience lasted less than a minute but I never want to go into that tower again.

The Check Point Charlie Museum focused on the cold war and the Berlin Wall. Its displays showed how people from risked their lives and created new and imaginative ways of escaping from East Berlin to West Berlin.
Jan 6, 2011