BERLIN BABY: An Annotated Itinerary
During my travel break last week, I traveled to Berlin with my housemates Jess and Isabella. We had a great time seeing all the historic, touristy, and cultural sites. I have always wanted to visit Berlin, but not simply to see these sites. My interest in Berlin is personal and genealogical. My grandmother was born in Berlin in 1930, but fled by the age of 8 on the last kindertransport, prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Because of this, the city has always been present in life. Having heard about it for so long, I was excited to discover it for myself. Here's a summary of what I saw and what I thought:
SATURDAY, MARCH 3rd
4:30- I arose before dawn, zipped up my suite-case, searched for one of my glove for 10 minutes, finally found it under my chair, and left for the airport!
6:00- Arrived at the airport
7:25- Boarded our flight! The airplane was nearly empty, and then delayed on the tarmac for half an hour. But that combination meant I was able to sprawl out in an aisle and sleep some more, so no harm done.
10:00- Arrival at hostel
11:30- Breakfast at TINMˆN: a delicious brunch spot in an adorable cafe-laundromat-hostel that revive our spirits. You know its hip when they replace a vowel with a punctuation mark. (Thanks for the tip Rachel!)
13:30- After wandering our way across Museum Island, we went into the Berlin Cathedral and climbed up
to its dome. The light streaming in from the dome was beautiful, and the view from the top was terrific.
15:00- Ran into a bust of Hegel! As a philosophy major, I am required to pose with all the busts of philosophers I find, each counts as bonus points towards my thesis.
17:00- 19:00- Took a while to get home because the first train we tried to take got closed because of election protests, and then we got lost in the metro station.
21:00- Late dinner at Salt n Bone, a very tasty burger in a cool space.
11:00- Crawled into bed, exhausted from a long first day.
SUNDAY, MARCH 4th
12:00- Mauper Park Flea Market: If there's one thing to know about me, it's that I love flea markets. This flea market was especially fun because among all the antiques and the thrifted cloths, I kept finding little trinkets I recognized from my grandmother's house, things that have always been a part of my life, but that I did not know were of german origin. I bought a little charm that reads "Viel Glück", good luck in German, to carry with me for the rest of my travels.
13:30- Berlin Wall Memorial: very interesting to see the No-Man's Zone, which has been left intact in this neighborhood.
15:00- Neues Museum: The art history nerd in me freaked out when I saw the Bust of Nefertiti, which I sadly was not allowed to take pictures of.
17:00- Jewish Museum: I was extremely excited to visit this museum, because I read about its architecture on my first day of my Art History class at DIS. The architect, Daniel Libeskind, intended to make the viewers feel the experience of the european jew as they move through the museum's different axes. And boy, is it effective. Suffice it to say, I was very moved by the experience.
19:00- Vietnamese dinner
21:30- Pub crawl!
MONDAY, MARCH 5th
12:00- Brunch at Steel Bikes Cafe: fueled up for our last day, ready to hit all the tourist sites left on our list.
13:00- Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe: This memorial, like the axis of exile at the Jewish museum, used uneven ground and tall pillars to disorient the viewers. Its large size- both the surface area and the height of the pillars-of made this memorial even more powerful.
13:30- Brandenburg Gates
(spot the couple in the background)
14:00- Reichstag building
(Can you tell we're tourists yet?)
15:00- East Gallery Wall: Even if it weren't for the graffitis of his name all across the wall, it would be hard to stand here and not think of Donald Trump and his absurd plan to build a wall on the American Border.. His planned wall and the divisive rhetoric that goes with it is blind to the effects the Berlin Wall had on families, communities, and the city at large. When some people don't learn anything from history, must we all be doomed to repeat it?
20:00- Dinner at Zur Haxe: We had yet to eat german food so we went full, classic German for our last dinner. So German that the waitress was wearing a dirndl and spoke so little English that she didn't understand we asked to share one dish. She brought us each a duck instead! Despite it being delicious, we barely made a dent in our respective meals.
22:00- Packed up our bags and said goodbye to my travel partners, who were leaving for their next adventure early the next morning.
TUESDAY, MARCH 6th
9:00- 66 Kurfuerstendamm: Pilgrimage to the house my grandmother spent her first 8 years of life in, before emigrating to the US. It was quite moving to catch a glimpse where my grandma spend her childhood.
(pls ignore the fact that i look like a blob in these)
11:00- Off to the airport and travel to my next destination! Auf wiedersehen for now.