Berlin

Servus!
Last week was Berlin and it was amazing. Every step I took I was intrigued by the landmarks and sites and culture in general.
Day 1: We had a six hour train ride to Berlin on the ICE 'fast train'.  At times we were travelling at the speed of 200km/h. We arrived at the main train station, der Hauptbahnhof and it was massive. There were different levels and escalators with people rushing everywhere and massive signs. Wow! We then got taken to the hotel by a guy with a "Bright P-12 College" sign. Once we arrived, we went to our rooms and prepared for dinner. The walk to the restaurant was interesting.  Dinner was scrumptious! For entree, we had tomato soup. Main was smoked pork ribs and dessert was vanilla ice-cream. After dinner we caught the bus to the Reichstag (Parliament house). Once we arrived they had pretty heavy security, which is a good thing. We had to show our passports and have our bags scanned.  The building was massive and the architecture was again, flawless! We got taken up in a big elevator to the top of the building where we had an amazing view of the city at night! The Berlin light show was on too so it was even more beautiful!

We also got a little ear piece that told us information about the surrounding buildings. It was really interesting. After a while we decided to head off back to the hotel and go to bed.

Day 2: Berlin is alive on Monday. We were in the heart of the city and made our way to Checkpoint Charlie. This was a major border crossing between East and West Berlin, back when there was the wall dividing the city. There were a couple of scammers around but most of us avoided them ;)

The Checkpoint Charlie museum was a big building on a big wide street.

Once we got inside I was super keen to read all about the past, about life in divided Berlin, about escape attempts... there was a lot of reading. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to reading all of it but I got a pretty firm grasp of what had happened.
We then started to make our way to the Brandenburg gate. We took public transport to get there e.g. trains (underground!) Shoutout to Matilda Manning for her map reading skills and getting us to the right places.
There were so many people at the Brandenburg gate. The Gate was tall and has a statue on top. (As you can see in the picture:)

Afterwards we walked back to the Reichstag to look at it at daytime.

We made our way to the Jewish memorial. The memorial was grey blocks or "Art". I thought it was really interesting seeing this form of art. The memorial took up a whole block and was like a maze. I thought that the grey blocks symbolized gravestones of the ones lost during the holocaust. Of course, there were many more people murdered than there were blocks, but it was a real place of reflection.

Afterwards, we decided to go to Potsdamer Platz and the "Mall of Berlin". When we walked in we got a bit of a surprise...

There was a red carpet and posters of "Inferno" everywhere (This film has Tom Hanks in it). We started to work out that Tom Hanks was going to be there in 3 hours. Unfortunately, we didn't have the time to stay but how cool would that be?

Dinner that night was delicious. Entree was soup again (but still good), Main was chicken schnitzel and dessert was jam in a jar. It was a bit too sweet for my liking though.


Day 3: So much fun! We started off with an all you can eat buffet provided by the hotel but the day got even better. We went ICE SKATING! I love ice skating and I was super keen to go.

Thanks for reading.
Tessa Williams