Weekend with Lis

The post about the Stasi prison will have to wait until after Paris because I'll be too busy to blog too much until then.

Lis arrived at 9:30 Friday night, and we started off having fun right away by meeting up with some of my friends in Kreuzberg.  It was a fun night, but unfortunately the BVG (the company that owns all the public transit in Berlin) had scheduled a strike for Saturday until 7pm.  So we ended the night with a long walk home - good thing I knew the way!

Saturday morning, as the U-bahn was down, we did a great deal of walking.  There are 4 methods of BVG transport in Berin: U-bahn, S-bahn, tram, and bus.  Out of those, only half o the S-bahn was running.  In addition to that, there was a footbal match.  And the world's second largest film festival was still going on.  (I guess they planned their strike at a good time to draw attention!)  So, the city of Berlin plus a few bajillion tourists were crammed into very infrequent S-bahn cars.  Much to my surprise, I'd never had more positive and hygge encounters with Berliners before!  Everyone (well, a quarter of them were drunk footbal fans) was so friendly, and just laughing at the audacity of the train situation.

TWO people offered (without us asking) to take our photo Saturday.  All the Bavarian citizens must have come up for the weekend or something.

Lis jumping off of the art museum! 

Anyway, after a long day of exploring, we finally got home and our feet were throbbing so we had some down time before starting to cook our big feast!  We made a big italian dinner, and four of my friends came over and each brought a dish to share.  We ended up with a 3 course, and extremely stuffing meal!

Sunday we did a lot more exploring.  It was 40 degrees, so people were jogging outside en masse, and playing catch in t-shirts, etc (you know, typical 40 degree weather activities).  We visited the Topography of Terror museum, it's one of the city's free museums and is at the site where the Gestapo (the secret police of Nazi Germany) had their headquarters.  It was pretty much a summary of German history from 1933-45, during the Nazi Regime, but I did learn some interesting facts I hadn't learned of before.  It was a pretty good museum, and I would recommend it, especially if you're less familiar with the specifics of the Nazi era.

After this, we went to Curry 36, one of the two original/most famous currywurst places in Berlin.  It was absolutely delicious (and the people were even friendly!) - you could definitely tell the difference between that and any ol' currywurst.  Delish!

Lis's photo skills, my editing skills

We finished off the night by making our favorite German dish - Käsespätzle - all by ourselves!  We aren't known to be the best cooks around, but it turned out to be absolutely delectable.

That's what a face should look like if it tastes Käsespätzle as good as this.

This morning I took Lis back to the airport.  It was so sad to part ways again :( But it was such an awesome weekend, and so refreshing to have my best friend around again!  We finally got to fulfill part of our long-time dream of exploring Europe together.  Taking it one city at a time :)

Speaking of best friends - I will be a bit inactive on the blog this week, because on Wednesday morning I'm leaving to go visit Lucy!  Yes, I know she was just here, but that's just the way our schedules work out because we're so busy the next few months. She's got an awesome place and cool friends in Prague, so I'm super excited to see her, them, and the city!  I will be getting back Saturday night, and will hopefully have time to blog before leaving for Paris on Sunday afternoon with my school for our first study tour.

The weekend

Lucy arrived on Saturday morning, and we started our adventures on Saturday afternoon!  The weather was freezing, about 10 degrees with the wind chill, and when you're walking around outside all day that is truly frigid!!! But we learned our lesson on Saturday, and on Sunday we wore under armour leggings under our jeans!

Our first stop Saturday was the East Side Gallery.  That's a 1.3km section of the east side of the Wall, and in the 1990s the German government had artists from around the world paint murals on it (because the east side of the wall was completely empty, as they weren't allowed to go up to the wall, unlike the West - that's how you can tell what side is which; the west always has graffiti/writing on it and the East is [was] empty).  It was really cool to see all of the famous murals, but I look forward to going back in the spring, because we walked really fast since we were so cold!

I am in Berlin

this is on the bottom of the quebec license plate - it says "I remember" - very fitting

Lucy and I found an Invisible Children sticker - it's one of our favorite organizations, and it's in front of my favorite mural! 

After that frigid walk, we took a short ride around the city to see all of the main sights.

me and the Reichstag

the brandenburger tor in the sunlight, and an obnoxious tourist who, despite my staring at him, insisted on ruining my photo.

After all this cold exploring, we met up with Devon and Elizabeth and all had the most delicious and hygge (if you'll allow me to use some Danish) traditional German dinner! Yes, I have been in Germany for 3 weeks and had not had German food yet.  That's what happens when you're a college student on a budget! Obviously I got my favorite dish - Käsespätzle!!

spätzle is pasta dumplings, and käsespätzle is those with cheese and caramelized onions in it.  the most delicious and unhealthy dish ever.

On Sunday, since there isn't much to do in Berlin, we explored in the cold some more and then went to the Prenzlauer Berg flee market.  Flee markets are huge here, and sell all kinds of things from food to crafts to old crap that you don't need.  Unfortunately this one was mostly old crap that we didn't need.  But it was in Mauerpark, which is a park in the middle of the city that has the Wall running through it.  That park will be really cool to see in the spring (I feel like I'm saying that about everything...)

Frozen, we decided to look for a place to get lunch.  Obviously since we're in Germany, we decided to go to an Indian restaurant!  It was inexpensive and delicious.  Unfortunately since you have to pay for glasses of water, we had to ration our beverages while we ate this spicy food, and it was a true test to my taste buds - holy smokes!!!

After this delicious meal, I met up with Elizabeth and Devon and we went to church, and the service was really great.  We are joining a young adults community group, and this Wednesday night is our first meeting (dinner party)!  I'm so excited!  It'll be awesome to connect with people our age from around the world.  I didn't come to Germany to hang out with Americans all the time!

Wednesday (Mittwoch)

Yesterday we got very lucky and were graced with some beautiful weather!! So for German class, our professor had us go on a little scavenger hunt of sorts around the city, which was really fun.  We first rode the M100 (the city bus that hits many of the main landmarks/sites in Berlin), and then got off at Alexanderplatz and had to find many things, and then we ended up back at Humboldt.  It was really nice to have to find our way on our own with just a map (just a paper map - kids without gps!), because it forced us to get to know where we're going better.  As a result I feel like I know my way around much of the Mitte much better now.  We took a detour into the Radison hotel near Alex(anderplatz), because we'd heard that it had an aquarium that went up to the ceiling.  Sure enough, we found this! In the second photo you'll see a spiral staircase inside of the tank.. it's like a staircase/elevator that you can 'ride' up into the aquarium on.

from the bottom

from the elevator/top

Anyway, the tour was great and I finally got some quality photos of some main Berlin sites for my Blocker project! I know only 3 of you wanted to do that last time I recommended it, but I do believe it's worth a look......  (here's 1).

The Berliner Dom - a beautiful and massive church on Museum Island

I'll post later about today (Friday) and our trip to the DHM (Deutsches Historisches Museum).