Spring Break in Berlin (Part 1)

First off, I am sorry for not blogging about my amazing spring break sooner. I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of my very close friends from Mercyhurst was planning to join me in Dublin, when we came back from break, and spend then next 5 days with me. Carolyn graduated last year and she, our friend Amanda, and I are very close (and all studying the best major ever!!). She is currently doing her masters degree program in London and will continue doing so until her dissertation is due in Sept.

Anyways that is my excuse for not blogging. I couldn't exactly turn to her and say, "yeah I know this is your first time in Ireland but I really need to blog so our plans to bike to the cliffs are gonna have to wait". Yeah no, that wasn't happening.

So anyways I have tons to tell you all about Berlin and so you can expect at least the next three posts to be about Berlin. So, without further ado.....

So I will admit that the very first bit of our journey was not much fun for anyone. We all had to wake up and be ready to pile onto a bus set for Dublin, at 2:50 in the morning. Yes you read that right, 2:50 AM! And after the long bus ride (where I got absolutely no sleep) we had to go through all of the general airport stuff and wait for our plan. Then we flew to Berlin (where I, again, got no sleep) and we landed in Berlin. Then we took the S-bahn (one of the train/subway systems) to the station nearest to our hotel (Savignyplatz; that's the station not the hotel lol).

                                                  (Picture of a typical train station in Berlin)
                                                   
We then proceeded on with a short walk to our hotel.

After making it to the hotel we all had to sit (actually more like stand) around and wait for the manager to get us all of our keys, only to find out that the roommate assignments had gone missing. So then we had a scramble to find whom we wanted to room with since it was left to us at this point. I got to room with some wonderful people that I had roomed with back during out weekend in Dublin.

                                                         (Main stairwell up to our hotel)

Then we got a bit of down time to relax, because we were slightly behind schedule and we all put it to a vote between two options. 1) if we wanted some time to relax and then go on a modified tour or (2) just power through with the original plan at a faster pace.

In a stunning turn of events, the 32 college students voted for the option of down time.

After a little over an hour's rest we all got back out on the S-bahn and went down to this sort of shopping street further into the city. We then walked a ways and came to this big opening, kind of like a long town square of sorts, where the main gate between West and East Berlin is. There we saw these four guys doing a street performance of a sequence of dances. It wasn't quite a flash mob because it was only the four of them and they all started at the same time but it was still interesting to see. And only after being in the country for a few hours no less.

We then went to the Reichstag otherwise known as the German Parliament building.  It was very beautiful but sadly we did not have reservations to get in to tour it. While near the Reichstag we saw these really cool street performers.

We all thought they were statues at first. But then this little girl put a coin or two in their little bowl there and they started moving around and doing a skit for us. It was pretty cool I must say. We then back tracked through the gate and made our way towards Museum Island. Yes, I kid you not, there is an actual small island in the middle of the large river running through Berlin where there are only museums. I was in heaven. More on that later though.

We then were shown where we were all going to be taken to have some traditional German food for our first dinner in Berlin. After that we were set free for about an hour and then we all met back up and got ready to eat.

First let me just say that there was a lot of beer brought to our tables. You can't have a traditional German dinner without beer. First course was a cucumber salad and it was very tasty! Then came the main course of some sort of roast in what I think was a beer sauce, steamed carrots, and roasted potatoes. It was all very good (once I got used to the taste of the beer sauce lol). Then came desert which was a chocolate pudding covered in a vanilla cream sauce. I have always hated pudding but I promise I at least tried it.

By the time we got back from dinner it was nearly 9 and everyone was pretty tired. I decided to call it an early night so that I could try to get as much done as I could the next day.

Well there you have it. Day one of four in Berlin. And that wasn't even my busiest day. More to come soon. :)