Berlin-poor is sexy

Holocaust Memorial

East Side Gallery-Berlin Wall

Parliment

Here's the sitch- I'm currently in Paris trying to figure out how on earth to get to Dublin, and I haven't even blogged about Berlin or Amsterdam...eek! Basically, I'm going to make this one short and sweet.

When I picture Germany images of beer gardens and bratwurst come to mind. Due to my own lack of research, I was extremely caught of guard when I got to Berlin. In my opinion, Berlin is the hipster capital. It's like if San Fran and Brooklyn had a baby. If you are dressed nice you will NOT get in a club- the grungier the better. Their motto is "poor is sexy." Graffiti is not looked down on- it's practically encouraged. The food to try isn't a bratwusrt- it's curry (however they do serve it over bratwurst too). It was nothing like I expected, but that doesn't mean I didn't manage to have an awesome time.

We stayed at the Wombats hostel, which was awesome (rooftop bar, laundry services, etc.). The first night we started to prepare to go out around 10/11 until we looked up some of the popular places online and the EARLIEST they recommend getting to a club is around 2 or 3! My friend from high school, Christine, was also in town, so we made plans to meet up. Christine was staying with some locals, so we went to about four different lounges that we never would have found (or gotten into for that matter) if we hadn't been with Christine's friends. I won't get into detail about the night, but I will say that we finally collapsed into our hostel bed at 7:30AM. The rest of the nights in Berlin were much more mellow so that we could get some full days of sight seeing in.

The first sight we saw was (big shocker) the Berlin Wall. There is part of the wall that they left standing called the East Side Gallery. The whole stretch of the wall here is painted with various works, many involving themes of freedom, peace, etc. It was really cool how something so oppressive was turned into a way to express creativity. The other side of the East Side Gallery is covered in graffiti, which was also fun to check out.

Our entire second day was spent on bikes. Biking is definitely the best way to get around Berlin because it is so big! We biked down to the WWII holocaust memorial, which is all of these big granite blocks of various heights. It created a really unique look. We biked all around the parliment buildings, which according to our front desk guy is "the place that is pretty much running Europe" right now. We also biked for a good portion of the day through Tiergarten, their version of Central Park. It was nice to get away from the big buildings for a bit and just journal in the park. Side note: Berlin does not look like the rest of Europe (at least to me). The buildings are all very modern, and I'm assuming that because of damage from wars.

I could definitely go on about Berlin and I'm leaving out a lot, but I need to figure out how to get to Dublin in a few days! Blog on Amsterdam is coming soon- stay tuned!