A History Lesson in Berlin

---

---

Europe travels!
Kirsten Richardson After a long 11 hour bus ride, we finally arrived in Berlin. Our hostel was the best hostel we've stayed in so far, it's brand new and it's the first one that doesn't reek of stale smoke which was great. It was pretty late already so we all just grabbed a bite to eat and headed to bed.
Thursday we signed up for a 4 hour walking tour around the city. We saw so much, more than you would ever see on any bus tour. We saw Museum Island, the most Catholic looking Protestant Church ever, Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall, the spot that Hitler's bunker once stood, and so much more. It was an amazing tour, I think I learned more in those 4 hours about what happened in Berlin and Europe than I did in any history lessons. We also saw a few of the reasons that Berlin is millions of dollars in debt. An artist designed and built a memorial for all of the Jewish that were killed in the war and that memorial alone cost just under 1 million dollars. And they are eventually building a memorial for all of the groups that were killed in the war (Homosexuals, disabled, etc.). We ended the tour in West Berlin and our hostel was in East Berlin so as we were heading back the skies decided to open up and it bucketed down with rain, leaving us so sopping wet you would have thought we had just climbed out of a swimming pool fully dressed. We got back the hostel, got showered and changed, did laundry and then headed downstairs to meet our Pub Crawl goup! We had signed up for the pub crawl with the walking tour. We all got free drinks before we left and at 8 we headed off to the first of 4 bars we were going to. Every bar included a free shot and cheap drinks, it was really cool. And if you weren't finished your drink when it was time to leave, no worries, they would pour it in a plastic cup for you and you could walk with it to the next bar, that's crazy! Drinking in the streets is perfectly legal here. We even stopped on the side of the road, formed a circle and they came around pouring Jagermeister down our throats, because as we all know, Jagermeister does come from Germany. We headed home at about 2:30 after the last stop at a dance club which was awesome. All of the music here is played in English which is awesome.
Woke up a little later in the morning today (Friday) and headed out to wander the streets of Berlin on our own. We headed to the more touristy part on the train which was a really nice part of town. Just spent a few hours browsing around and then headed home because the weather was blustering windy and rainy. We had a nice dinner in the hostel and then spent the evening visiting with other tour members as it is our last night we will see them as tomorrow we are flying to Venice! Warm weather here we come!!

---

Photos

Church
This is nicknamed "The most Catholic looking Protestant Church" ever.