Germany: Berlin (yet again)

---

The only real hiccup I had with transportation in London happened the morning I left for my quick flight to Berlin. I was heading to a different airport - the discount airport, basically, haha - and the line I needed was unfortunately under a great deal of construction. As such, I had to walk to a new station and ask for directions quite a few times to get information on the re-routing I would need to do. FORTUNATELY, I'm absolutely obsessive about leaving myself with plenty of time, and this was no issue at all. I got to the airport with plenty of time - too much, in fact, as the Gatwick Airport doesn't even give you gates until about 40 minutes before your flight leaves. Still, it was an interesting experience, and made me very glad that I traveled so light, as dragging my bag around wasn't TOO much of an issue.

I had no problem on the flight itself, and quickly arrived in Berlin, where my sister met me at the airport. Yay!! I was so excited to see her. As this part of my trip was about seeing her and not about "seeing the sights", necessarily, I spent the next few days mostly just hanging out at her apartment while she was at work and then spending time with her once she got home. I did go out one day to check out an old-styled part of the city near the Berliner Dom called Nikolaiviertel. I hadn't seen that area when I was in Berlin five years earlier, so that was nice to explore.

The weather, unfortunately, decided not to play nice while I was visiting. There was a massive windstorm AND a super late snowstorm, so it ended up being just too cold to go enjoy much. That was okay, though, since I wasn't really there for sight-seeing.

The last day I was in Berlin, my sister had off for Easter holidays, so we took a trip down to Potsdam to see the castles. I'd been there before, and seeing everything again was super crazy and nostalgic, and we had a great time taking silly pictures and looking at all the historical places there. Livy had never been there, so we had a good time seeing everything. After we got back to Berlin, we took a walk down to the Ampelman store, one of the few places open on the holiday, so I could buy some souvenirs, and then we went to re-visit the Brandenburg Gate, the Jewish Memorial, and had a couple of beers in a small restaurant/pub. It was a really wonderful day spent together!

I left on Saturday, and had such a great vacation. It took forever for me to get these write-ups done due to work stress and general life suckitude, but the European trip was a highlight of the first half of 2015!

---