Berlin in Pictures!

Goofing off while at lunch at the Italian place

We found the Christmas Market in Berlin! Right next to the spire of the bombed cathedral from WWII

Christmas Markets are good for souvenirs, pictures, and windmill children's things?

Big mall! Caprese salad and pizza from the Italian place

Remains from the fireworks... Berlin lit up! And candy at the markets

We had to buy some... chocolate covered strawberries!

The Berlin Wall Memorial, plaques representing an underground tunnel used to sneak people to West Berlin and largest part of the wall that is still standing today

These are some of the faces of the people who met their death while trying to escape East Berlin. We're cold in the metro but we rebounded to look cute at the TV tower!

Berlin Bears! And cool artwork on the buildings in Berlin

California Breakfast Slam likes to play with the English language, but has some funny names for their drinks. Burritos so good, Eric had to lick his plate!

The creepiest slide I've ever seen on a playground, and I don't remember the significance of the second photo, whoops?

At first glance I thought this was a real baby. And a scary one. Then I realized it was worse, a creepy baby doll. WHY would you buy something like that and WHY would you put that Chucky doll on display on the metro?

Berlin bears! Eric inspecting the statue at Charlottenberg Pallace, while Carissa and Ben reenact

My turn to reenact, with my ticket, and lovely painted ceilings

The chandeliers in the palace were awesome! Mirror selfie

The green and gold room.

Lovely huge room and paintings and exquisite clocks

I actually really liked this silk wall paper, totes pretty. And then this is an awesome grandfather clock. The royals know how to do it.

Friedrich and flowers, a grand teacup, and the busiest room.wallpaper I have ever seen in my life. Maybe the Royals don't know how to do it.

More fun ceilings and chandeliers, works of Voltaire, and Ben is over it.

some more wall panels then photos from outside the palace

FACE

Brandenberger Tor (Brandenburg Gate)

Ben and I, Eric and Carissa

Me, Carissa, Eric and then Ben with the US Embassy

We represented America well

Holocaust Memorial and a view of the moon from within the "tombs"

Checkpoint Charlie! (and sorry none of these rotated? Using Square mode on the iPhone apparently does this)

Ben and his mom, Jan, Ben, and his mom

Always interesting to visit this piece of history.

Memorial to those who lost their lives while trying to reach West Berlin

Bier! And then snaps from Ben throughout the day

My lovely typical German meal: pork and spatzkle, then we signed a coaster to put on the wall with the others

Our EPIC dessert that was delicious. Think pastry with cherries and almonds and icing-like sauce. It melts in your mouth. And Eric acting out the part of Scrooge with his candle. We decided he needed one of these for his house.

Our coaster amongst the others! And SO FULL

And possible a sugar coma based on this silliness because we finished the epic dessert!

What a lovely time in Berlin!

Day 3: Brunch and the sights

Well the day started out tough enough for me. As we all know now, Alabama played a tough game but made too many mistakes and ultimately lost to Ohio State. Very sad, but I'll still be traveling to Dallas anyway to see Mari! And maybe we'll still see if we can get tickets to the game. 

But anyways, since I was the only one who watched the game until the end, I was up until after 7am (!!!) and then had to wake up just after 10am. So exhausted but hopefully not so exhausted that grumpy Cheryl came out haha. 

We got up and headed to this place California Breakfast Slam to have brunch. Because of my late bedtime I was especially starving so Carissa and I shared blueberry pancakes, banana walnut pancakes, and biscuits and gravy. The pancakes were delicious! And had this wonderful sauce on them but the sausage gravy left a little to be desired. I think maybe biscuits and gravy should only be done in the US...

But after that, it was about 2pm so we hopped back on the metro to go see the Charlottenberg Palace, which was one of the royal residences of Friedrich the Great (yay, Prussians!). We saw the New Wing since we were short on time before closing. It was nice, lots of old paintings and old chairs and old things. But also lots of gold detail and an old library which I thought was cool because it had original versions of the works of the great thinkers from the Enlightenment like Voltaire. 

After the palace we headed back to the Brandenberg Gate to get pictures of it without the other 1.5 million people who were there on New Years Eve. It was all lovely and lit up and we got some great photos of it and the American embassy that is right next to it (we got some prime real estate, yall). 

Next was the Holocaust Memorial which is less than a block away. We walked among the blocks and then headed to Checkpoint Charlie, the gate between East and West Berlin where at least 150 people perished trying to make it from the East to the West. 

I also learned a neat fact about how to tell whether you're in East or West Berlin: the walking signals at intersections. If you're in West Berlin, the walking signals look similar to what we have here, a stick figure with a round head. In East Berlin however, the walking signals is a stick figure who wears a hat! And apparently some people are up in arms that the signal is a man and think there should be women on the signals as well. My response to that? I'm sure there are bigger fish to fry. 

But anyway, after that we headed to dinner! We went to a German restaurant that serves typical German fare and it was Delicious! I had pork, Zurich style, with spatzlä (sp?). I tried to order some goulash as well but our waiter said it was too much haha. Whig turns out he was right because these portions were HUGE. But that didn't stop us from getting this huge dessert to share amongst everyone all in all, a very delicious end to the day. 

And end of the day it was for me. After 7 miles of walking (which is actually our daily average so far), and my lack of sleep, I was done with the day. So into bed I went and now we're on the train to Dresden!

Pictures in the next post, I promise! I haven't yet had time to upload them but will do that now that we made it to Prague :)

Day 2: Recovery and Walking. Lots of walking.

After our late night and exhaustion, we decided January 1st was a good day to sleep in. So we slept until almost 1pm, and it was glorious. 

After that we grabbed a late lunch at this cute Italian place next to one of the biggest malls in Germany. Fortunately for my bank account, this mall was closed, as were many things because of the holiday. But, there was a Christmas market! 

The Christmas market we stumbled upon was right by this old cathedral that is partially standing as a reminder of World War II. The main part of it that still exists is its broken steeple as you can see in the photos I'll post later. The stalls had some good loot, like chocolate covered strawberries! And some nice options for souvenirs. 

After walking through, we headed to the Berlin TV Tower to see if we could get to go to the top. Alas, the wait was 4.5 hours and we aren't about that life. So we just took pictures of it instead :)

But at this point it's approaching 8pm so we thought to head to a bar for a drink before trying to nap before the Alabama game. This was easier said than done as Ben forced us to walk to multiple places that were closed. That was cold, Ben. Real cold. Literally. 

But we found a bar that was open and grabbed a beer. It was called Cake but they didn't have any cake :( but they did play the band Cake so there's that. We also met a nice Swedish guy who probably asked us about 8 times where we were from. He may or may not have been on something...

After that, back to the apartment we went! We called around to a couple of places to see if they would have the game on but none of them would be open until the end of it (booooooo). So we ended up ordering some (surprisingly) good sushi and pizza and turned on the TVs to watch the FSU massacre. I don't even feel bad for Jameis at all. 

And now we wait, because our game is on at 3am local time. Worth it! I will never forsake my team! ROLL TIDE!

David Hasselhoff's New Years

Well, it has been an eventful first 12 hours in Berlin. My flight was uneventful, other than me pampering myself by eating too much. I easily met up with Carissa and Eric at the airport before we all met up with Ben and co.

Me pampering myself because I was able to get a Business Class flight with my Skymiles! yay!

The apartment is quite nice! I picked a good one. Has real beds for everyone and a nice bathroom and very clean! Overall, a great catch. Oh, and English television channels... Maybe they'll have one with the Alabama game on? If not, we have a contingency plan :)

Anyway, after dropping our things off, we got bundled up and headed to Brandenburger Tor (or in English, the Brandenburg Gate) where all the evening festivities would take place. And the lovely thing, its just a hop skip and a jump on the metro away! 

Tiergarten park around the gate was all set up and already had vendors open and a Ferris wheel and tons of food when we got there around 4pm. Because of the large crowd, we decided to eat around there and stay so we could get a good spot for the show. 

Typical German beer that our hosts stocked for us, the multilevel Berlin train station

Outside the Reichstag! Me, Carissa, and Eric then Jan, Mom, and Ben

We loved that the porto-potties were called Toi Toi's, a ferris wheel and me and Carissa!

So, yes, this means we were on our feet for a good 8-9 hours! We're champs! But were we entertained during this wait for 2015? Yes, but not because all the performers were good. Tokyo Hotel performed which was cool but there was also a man with a bald head and ginger beard who had the most ridiculous falsetto voice we'd ever heard. I literally don't know how someone decided he was a good idea. Or how he ever got popular? A lot of the artists were local groups and were good but I find music is more enjoyable when you understand the words, which alas, we could not for most of them. But... It was all worth it because

Drum roll please

DAVID HASSLLHOFF WAS THERE TO RING IN THE NEW YEAR! And yes, he performed. Complete with a costume that included a shirt with his face on it. And he performed Freedom and the Germans all loved him. Seriously, he was like the finale. You absolutely, positively cannot make this up. And the funniest thing to me, is I made a joke about David Hasselhoff performing and someone behind us heard me and was like, oh he is performing! Which just blew my mind. Until he actually performed and decimated my mind. Totally worth all the time on our feet. The Hoff is a legend, duh. 

The light show was FANTASTIC for the whole 9 hours

This guy in blue on the right was not. We think he had botox (or hope) because he showed literally no emotion throughout his performance. The fan of his on the left showed more emotion than he did...

We were this close to the emcees! and THE HOFF

Proof that he was wearing a shirt of himself. And New Years lights!

David Garrett, the famous violinist

After that, we decided to call it a night because turns out being on your feet standing around for 9 hours can take a lot out of you. We headed back for the metro but all the excitement was not yet over. 

Little did we know we would be encountering a war zone of Germans exploding their fireworks. Apparently, they can only buy fireworks from Dec 29-31 and it's only legal to shoot them from 6pm Dec 31 to New Years morning. So imagine The Purge, but with people with fireworks. Some people were respectful and shot theirs into the air for others to enjoy. And then there were the assholes who decided to throw them at people. Yay, intelligent life forms. 

But we survived and will live on for the adventures that tomorrow will bring!

And what is New Years without donuts???