I have finally spent some time in GERMANY! I am currently writing from das Autobahn. Bryan just topped out at 135 km/hr (disappointingly not that fast), maybe he made it faster, but 135 was the highest I saw from the back seat. I think my mom’s speed warning is to kick Bryan’s seat occasionally. We are heading north out of Berlin, to some small town about 1.5 hours north.
Just wrapped up 2 full days in Berlin and the city is MUCH bigger and more widespread than i had expected. Coming from Amsterdam, a very condensed and walkable city, to Berlin was quite the change. The first thing we saw after getting off the train from the airport was the Kaiser Wilhelm church that remains standing after serious damage from bombings during WWII. It was a crazy sight to see. We then made it to the hotel and we went out to find our first german meal for lunch. Meatballs. I was a happy camper. After lunch, we bought 2 day sightseeing bus tickets and started to make our way through the city. Visited checkpoint Charlie, saw parts of the wall that are still standing, and also made our way to “Terror Alley” which is where the headquarter building of the Nazi SS once stood. They have a very sobering memorial and museum at the site now. After finishing the bus route, we found some dinner and explored the city a bit more by foot before turning in for the night.
Day 2 in Berlin started off early with a run to the bakery for breakfast. The bread here is phenomenal, very fresh...so good!! I now understand why I have always liked bread so much, I am just being a good German. We jumped on the tour bus again to see some of the stops we did not get off on the day before. One stop had a big city square surrounded by buildings with domes and clock towers. We walked out into the center of the square and were quickly ushered to cross the street, as we walked out onto a movie set! Apparently, all of the other people in the square were all actors, it was pretty funny. Ooops… We saw the capitol building of Germany, the Brandenburg Gate (and US Embassy, they have a prime location right on the square), some fancy palace that we spent an hour looking around, several sights in between, and also made our way out to the west to see the Olympic Stadium grounds. The Olympic Stadium hosted the “Jesse Owens” olympics in the 1930s and was eventually severely bombed out during WWII. It was completely rebuilt and again refurbished in the early 2000’s in order to host the Soccer World Cup. It was a really neat stadium!
We took the U Bahn (subway) to dinner on the north side of Berlin. It is very clearly where most of the young people live in the city, It had a bunch of cheap (yet really good) restaurants and bars. After dinner, Bryan and I split off and went over to the East Side Gallery. The East Side Gallery is a ¾ mile long segment of the Berlin Wall that is still standing. It is the graffiti section and people have created some extravagant street art on the wall. It was pretty cool to see at night, glad we made the trip over there.
As I mentioned before, we are driving north to Swanbeck to meet with the pastor at some small church, then we will be heading down to Wittenburg to stay the night.
Lets see how this goes...
