BERLIN

Once we finally made it to Berlin we saw Rainer and Val waiting right outside baggage claim! Yes, thank god! So we got all excited and relieved and walked right out not realizing we wouldn’t be able to walk in again to redeem our bag. Oops..So we had to have someone look for our bags in there for us…only our bags never came out. Great. So we went to the baggage people…our luggage was still in Munich, fantastic. So they gave us a little travel care package with a triple XL teeshirt, a toothbrush, shampoo…all the little essential things. But we were freaking out about our bag. We had a tour planned for early morning, and alls I had to wear was the shirt I had on which I gracefully dropped a meatball on hours before at lunch..and now this new XL tee. Hot. Anyways, we got to Rainer and Vals and they had beer chocolates and little gifts for us! They are so sweet, the best hosts ever!

The next morning we woke up pretty early to meet our tour guide. We had to borrow a bunch of Val’s clothes/ hats &gloves …warm things since we didn’t have our suitcase and Rainer told us it was freezing out. So we bundled up best we could..or thought we could, and headed out to the cold.

The tour was extremely interesting and our tour guide was excellent! The tour took us from a beautiful dome cathedral, to checkpoint Charlie, to the Jewish memorial and everywhere beyond and in between! We were on this tour for 4 hours, until around one! Germany’s history is so interesting that it really wasn’t boring for a second. As the tour carried on, it seemed like the temperature continued to drop. Leggings weren’t cutting it anymore and I was absolutely freezing. We stopped and got the best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted, but it was gone in a sip and then I was freezing again. My teeth were actually chattering at one point, we couldn’t believe how cold it was! As much as we enjoyed the tour, we admittedly enjoyed it coming to an end as well, because that meant it was time to go inside and warm up!

We went to a Bavarian Restaurant for lunch….that I continued to mix up with Bulgarian….struggle. They love pretzels (like the big soft ones) in Germany and it is what they have as appetizers rather than say, a loaf of bread. So delicious…and seriously I’m sorry for this always turning into a legit food journal, but the different foods I’ve tried since I’ve been abroad are all so different, and all way too good! Its becoming a problem. Katie and I both got the schnitzel with fried potatoes. It was like smothered in cheese and ham or something that was extremely delicious. And those fried potatoes were the best things I’ve ever had as you’ll find out because I ordered them at the rest of my meals. After we cleared our plates, literally, we headed back into the cold.

The checkpoint Charlie Museum is where we went next. It was huge! Its just crazy how much history there is, and how after looking in a museum for an hour there is still so much more to learn about. Some of the really interesting things we saw in the museum were how people would try to sneak out/over the Berlin wall. There were women who tried shoving themselves in suitcases…so claustrophobic so scary, to people making zip lines from their windows all the way to the other side!

We were wiped out after this so headed home for a quick power nap. On our way we were able to pick up our luggage. THANK GOD. Because I am definitely going to need something more than leggings tomorrow if this weather was planning on staying the same. Once we were all rested enough we went to a bar called Julep’s. We ordered drinks and had a great time. Then we ordered a bunch of appetizers and tried a whole bunch of new things! Katie likes tomatoes now and she’s really proud about it.

Saturday

Museum of German History. I thought the Checkpoint Charlie museum was big…no no this museum was enormous! We spent quite a long time in there soaking up all the German History. After we went to the dome cathedral we saw on our tour. Inside was beautiful and amazing just like all the other cathedrals. We got to climb it, which was horrible but incredible once we reached the top. It was seriously a struggle and I know half way up Auntie Val seriously regretted coming with. From the top we could see all of Berlin. It was so nice in the sun, it actually felt kind of warm for the few minutes we were catching our breaths. Definitely not like the day before. Well after we climbed all those stairs we figured it was definitely time to eat something so we went to another Bavarian restaurant. This time we got the weiner schnitzel, which was the biggest portion of anything I’ve ever seen. Weiner schnitzel is fried veal, and it was crazy good. Katie and Rainer did a beer tasting and had like 4 beers each…which Rainer took down in a sip and Katie tried to keep up haha. As if we weren’t full enough we got some dessert platter that really pushed us over the top. This food coma was by far the worst.

We walked around the city area which was so cute I loved it, shops and restaurants or cafes everywhere. They were setting up the Christmas markets when we were there so unfortunately none of them were ready. There was however the coolest thing ever set up in the middle of the city. It was sledding. There was just this random hill of ice and you can pay like 5 euros to go up with a tube and sled down! So we did it, apprehensively because of how much we just ate…but it looked so fun! And it was, me Katie and rainer all went and we held on to each other’s tubes. Yah I was screaming the entire way down haha, it was so fun we went flying!!! It was so weird being at the top of a sledding hill and looking around and seeing buildings and cars everywhere, and no snow on the actual ground.

Next we went to this beautiful park which was pretty much the backyard of this Castle. I can only imagine how pretty it must be in the warmer months when flowers are blooming and everything is green!

We went back to the apartment after and literally all passed out for 2 hours. It wasn’t even planned to fall asleep but we were so wiped out and so full we couldn’t help it. We woke up around 8 and decided to go out for a little because we didn’t want to waste the whole night away! We went to an Irish pub where we got these drinks that tasted like a legit cookie. There was disorono, frangelico, vodka, orange juice, and whipped cream in it! It tasted like a milkshake. So so so good. We went to another bar after that called The Klo….its a dive bar. It was so weird and so fun.

Auntie Val walked in first and when she opened the door water squirted at her from this watergun thing on the wall! Hahah it was hysterical. There is just so much stuff all over the walls, caskets and toilet seats as chairs and statues of weird looking people everywhere! There was toilet paper on the walls, extremely inappropriate shows on the tvs and the beer was served in these urinal things.

Oh and there was a man on a loud speaker the entire time yelling out jokes and insults to the people in the bar. Although Rainer had to translate everything because the man was speaking German, it was even funnier to have to hear Rainer repeat the obscene things he was saying.

Sunday

We went to the ZOO! I had never been to a zoo before….or at least I can’t remember the last time I went. It was pretty cold out but walking around made it not so bad. The monkey house was insane. So many different types. They are so creepy though I’m actually kind of afraid of them now. Some of them were like literally putting on shows

whereas other ones were sketchy in the back corner staring at us.

I could have stayed in there all day and just observed them haha I thought it was so cool. All the other animals were interesting too but I felt bad for the kitties (lions and tigers etc) because they were all roaring and upset and stuck in tiny cages.

After the zoo we walked around town for a while seeing all the important and interesting things. Then we went to have lunch in the TV tower.

thats the TV tower.
The restaurant is at the top and it is rotating the entire time so that you get a 360 view of Berlin! I could tell immediately when I sat down that we were rotating and I got slightly light-headed but it was still awesome. Meal was great, as always. But my dessert was the best! So much ice cream.

The lunch lasted a pretty long time and kind of turned into our dinner as well and before we knew realized it was getting dark out! We went to the Olympic stadium but unfortunately it wasn’t open.

Monday
Ahh the time flew by, and we were not looking forward to leaving at all! We woke up early to get in as much as we could for our last day and headed to the KaDeWe…but that is not even close to how it sounds. The KaDeWe is an amazing and huge shopping center, mostly full of the expensive and designer stores.

One floor was basically a huge indoor market for buying fresh food etc. There was a section for all different types of foods and international sections. The American section was selling like some mac and cheese and a tiny can of rootbeer that they were charging about 4euros for! Then we went to my favorite part, the champagne bar!

Katie, Val and I had a nice glass of ice cold delicious champagne, I could have stayed there all day!

We got lunch at a Russian restaurant, which was amazing…of course like everything else! But that concluded our stay in Germany and soon we were off to the airport. It was so sad leaving we both had an unbelievable time. It was definitely my favorite trip so far!