First Few Days of 2012

To bring in the New Year, we made the four hour train ride from Bonn to Berlin. I really enjoyed Bonn and its small town atmosphere. But I was ready to experience the biggest city that Germany has to offer. The distinction was immediately clear. The streets were a lot wider and the buildings were a lot taller. After a quick lecture by Dr. Wasser on Euthanasia, we made our way to the New Year’s celebration around 8. It was quite the atmosphere. Food, drinks, and music EVERYWHERE! I’ve only seen such a thing on TV but it was awesome to witness it firsthand. Definitely something every person should experience atleast once in a lifetime. Soon after the clock struck 12, we started to head back to the hotel. The streets were a mess and it was just pure chaos everywhere.

So after a pretty wild night, I woke up at noon! After getting some breakfast, Chris, Shelby, Shikhi, and I went on an adventure through Berlin. We first went to the German Film Museum. It was cool to see how much Hollywood influenced German cinema and vice versa. From there, we dropped by the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. There were 2,711 concrete blocks of all different sizes arranged in a maze-like manner. Rather odd but very unique and a lot left for interpretation. From there, we walked to the famous Brandenburg Gate. After getting lost a little bit, we found our way to the Berlin Cathedral. Though not quite as gigantic as the Cologne Cathedral, it was just as elegant on the inside. Afterwards, craving some food, we remembered passing by a Tex-Mex place so we went back there for dinner. Surprisingly, the food was quite satisfying though Shelby might disagree. We decided to keep walking around so we ended up all the way at the Victory Column. Wanting to end the night on a good note, we decided to watch the movie, In Time…in German.

Today, we got an extensive tour of Berlin from a man that sounded more American than German. Early on, it was slightly depressing because he took us to a lot of places we went to yesterday which I soon realized were actually a lot closer than we made them out to be. There was just so much history everywhere. It seemed as if everywhere we went, something significant happened. In particular, Berlin seemed to have taken quite the beating during the Second World War as many of its buildings were damaged heavily and later repaired. We got to see a piece of the Berlin Wall that was still intact so that was pretty cool. Then, we went to visit the Reichstag. After passing security and getting frisked, we got a tour of the Reichstag. I got to sit in Chancellor Merkel’s seat and kinda sorta made a fool of myself. But in my defense, being the Chancellor of Germany is not easy these days! After dinner, Abbee, Danielle, and I decided to do some laundry. It was an interesting experience…But, we did manage to make some new friends! We met three guys from New Zealand, Norway, and Germany who were going to be in a musical performance and were just hanging out similar to us.

In the coming days, I really hope to try some currywurst since Berlin supposedly has the world’s best currywurst. I’ll be the judge of that!