Back from Beautiful Berlin

Crazyiest 4 days of my life, let me tell you !! This hurts my head to think about all this stuff to write down here haha, but I will manage. Now let me just sya first off , Berlin is BEAUTIFUL. Ich Liebe Berlin !!!!!!!!!!!! <3

Nele and I woke up on Thursday morning and took a 4 hour train to Berlin, blah. The train is starting to annoy me haha, so boring for so long. We got to Berlin around one. To Nele's discovery they built a brand new train station for the world cup last year, soooo she had no idea how to get to our hostel from there haha. There was no underground at the station so we ended up just taking the bus down to Trumstr ( our street ). Our hostel was really nice, Nele had stayed there before so she knew it was a good one . We ended up having a really nice room all to ourselves for super cheap too !! We headed on down to the U-Bahn ( underground) station, hahahaha now that was fun. It is a little bit crazy and hectic, there are about 20 different lines and some go here and some go there. It took us about 20 minutes to figure out how to get into the centre, which was only about 7 stops away, but us being us, took the long way. We ended up going several stops the wrong way, than accidentaly transfered on to the wrong line haha. Finally after 40 minutes, what should have taken us 8 minutes or so, we arrived to the part of town we wanted YAY .

The area of town we were in was call Postdamer Platz. It has all the big monuments and memorials, well the memorials are all over Berlin, which is really nice to see. We frirst went to see The Brandenburg Gate, which is Germanys most famous landmark. It is the only gate remaning that was used for the entry into Berlin, but in 1961 when the Berlin wall was built, the gate was closed. OH YA!! The wall! Well obiosuly its not still standing, but pieces are spread out all over the town. it was REALLY cool to actaully be touching and seeing a piece of history that I have heard so much about over the years. The traffic lights are cool too, the little men walking symbols I mean. That is how yo ucan tell if you are in West or East Berlin becuase the symbols in the traffic lights are different. I didn't know that at first and I thought my eye sight was going all wacked because one traffic light would be different then the previous one two blocks down the road haha . Beside the gate was the Reichstag building which is the German parliment, the president of Germany actually lives in there too ! It was this giant glass dome that you could go inside of , a bit more exciting than our parliment buildings . We kind of just wandered around the rest of the afternoon, looking at the different memorials. We walked through this HUGE pakr callled Tiergarten, it was Amazing. So pretty and peacful and all the tulips were in bloom !! I totally feel like I just taught a mini history lesson, so to change into something more exciting. Right behind the Brandenburg Gate is the Hotel Adlon....I had no idea why Nele was like " look theres Hotel Adlon" either so its okay. Well remember the crazy guy named Micheal Jackson? Well this hotel is the hotel that he dangled his child out of window from ! I had no idea that it was even in Berlin , but crazy eh? After all the walking around we went for dinner, wait for it, so exciting I know, SUSHI !! Nele & I were sure two happy campers to eat some sushi, oh my, how I miss thee . The sushi over here is a little pricey, okay not even a little, alot. We defienetly cherished the little portion that we ate haha.

On Friday we got up pretty early and headed out to start the da yon the town. Personally I was quiet excited for this day, I was actaully a little jumping bean. We were going to the ZOO ! Man was I ever excited. Baby Knut ! For those of you who dont know who he is, he is a baby polar bear, only 5 months old. His mom disowned him when we he was born at the zoo in Dec. Since he is still a baby you can only see him inbetween 11 - 12 , and the crowd was huge. But I saw him and he is SO adoarble and cuddly looking. I wanted to take him home , but Nele advised against it and said it would be probably a bad idea. The Berlin zoo is huge, one of the biggest in the world. It had every animal you could think of. Including my favourtie, PENGUINS ! Now comes the high light of my day, I got to pet a penguin !!!!! Basically my friggen dream in life to do so, and I did, I was freaking out for a little bit . After the zoo we went into central square and went shopping for the rest of the afternoon ! Berlin has this giant department store called " Ka De We" , it is 7 levels high. It is a very rich expensive store, Louis Vuitton, Chanel etc. we just went in to go to level 6 , the food level! There is food there from all over the world ! Nele wanted to buy some rootbeer becuase its her favourtie drink an they can't get it in Germany. And ha, guess how much it was , 2.50 euro for ONE can. I was like oh Ill get one too, then I saw it and was like oh, I cant wait till I get home for that haha!

Saturday mainly we just walked around town , the parts that were left that we hadn't seen. We went to the Berlin Cathedral which is huge. This inside is aboslutely stunning. Later in the day we went to visit some places that Nele's mom wanted us too see. Her mom grew up in Berlin so we went to see her old house and her elementary school. Nele was really excited to see all these places becuase she had never seen them before. Saturday night we went out for dinner & drinks. Berlin has there own beer, Berliner, very tasty ! Today we got up, checked out of our hostel, then we were on our way home. And we almost died, of over heating that is. It is 27 degrees here in Hamm today. We had to sit on a train for 4 hours with that heat too. Tomorrow is suppose to be even hotter, 29 degrees , oh my.

Well, sorry for lots of reading but hadn't wrote in almost a week. Oh ya, Im coming home ! I will be back on May 1st, get in around 220 pm. Not too sure how to spend my last 2 weeks. I want to go away again somewhere on Sunday for a few days. I want to go to France, and Ive already been to Paris so I am thinking I want to go somewhere new, but having a hard time decideding where. Id love to go to Nice down inthe French Riveria, but its 14 hours away on the train, blah. I dont want to spend my last week doing that. Especially since I only want to be gone for 4 days.

Miss everyone alot. xoxoxoxo

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