German gallavanting!

Alright so tonight is my last night in Berlin. I'm on my own for 24 hours or so, which is a little scary but totally manageable. A little needed, too. Now I've got some time to chill in the hostel and maybe get to sleep early. Tomorrow morning I'll get up early, go to the art museum, and then take my bus to Prague, where I'm meeting with Tommy and primo. Woo!

Berlin in review: a very cool city with a fascinating and tumultuous past. The result is a people that have a deep social conscience and a very interesting psychology. There is a lot of righteous rigidity side-by-side with an artsy and more ambiguous philosophy, if that makes any sense at all. There's kind of an interesting comparison with Belfast. And a little bit of Glasgow in there too.

Anyway:

Sunday:
Flight at 2
Got in around 5 German time (3rd time change in 24 hours)
Made it to our very functional and efficient hostel and met up with the other girls (Christine, Hillary, Betsy, and Nicole)
Dinner at the American 60s diner (just couldn't resist, it was so random! Delicious baked potato)
Planning sesh and skype

Monday:
Checkpoint Charlie museum early in the am- very cool museum about cold war Berlin and all of the wonderfully creative escape attempts. People swam the baltic sea attached to mini submarines!
A free walking tour of the city. Fantastic! Took us past the Brandenburg gate at Paris plaza (named for Germanic victory over France in the 1800s), the reichstag parliament building (with it's glass roof to represent literal transparency to it's people), the Jewish memorial (very very well done. Simple concrete abstract blocks to walk through in a kind of maze. The city kind of ceases to exist when you get into the center of it), the remains of hitlers bunker (now a very very unadorned and unmarked parking lot), the old Nazi headquarters (now endowed with socialist propaganda), remains of the wall (complete with "death strip"), checkpoint charlie, gendarmenmarkt plaza (with twin German and French cathedrals, except the German one is about 3 Metres taller), bebelplaiz square (where 20,000 books were burned by students only two months after Nazis came into power, now complete with a memorial library, empty to show where those 20,000 books should be), memorial to war fatalities (with an unprotected statue of a mother and child, braving the elements), and museum island (full of museums, if you couldn't guess that one.)
Quick snack, some time recuperating at the hostel
A walk with Becky
A late and very German dinner- vegetarian and gluten free!

Tuesday:
Sachenhausen concentration camp. We took a free tour, and while it was absolutely worthwhile, it really made me question the sickness that would allow humans to treat other humans in such a grotesque, grotesque way. Being there and seeing the camp was heavy. It made me tired in a way I've never felt before.
Fortunately we had time to walk around a normalize a bit when we got back. We took the rest of the day easy, got a little dinner and then went back to the hostel.

Today (Wednesday):
Christine, Hillary, Nicole, and Betsy went ahead on the next leg of their trip, and Becky and I went to Berlin cathedral. We climbed the dome and got an excellent view of the city, which is very flat (built on a marsh, which occasionally you catch whiffs of).
We pretty much spent the rest of the day walking. Like, we stopped for a sit down coffee and for dinner, and that was it. We did an "alternative Berlin" city walking tour- very cool! Lots of street art and we saw a real life artists commune! If you don't hear from me for a while- you'll know where I've gone. It smelled like urine, though. Also it was so warm out today that I drank iced coffee and had frozen yogurt- sitting outside, no less!! Spring has arrived!

The frozen yogurt was obscenely good. I'm considering stopping by tomorrow morning. As in, frozen yogurt at 10am. I could totally swing it.

Anyway that's all for now. I'll check in again in a few days. On to Prague!

Much love,
Erin