Berlin

So I seem to have completely missed out on writing a blog from when I went to Berlin- I loved Berlin so not sure how I forgot. I arrived in Berlin after a late flight from Paris on Friday (15th April). I stayed in a lovely hostel and had an 8 bed room all to myself on the first night which was nice! My first day in Berlin I had booked a bike tour outside the city (bit sick of touring round boring monuments!).

The bike tour was to Potsdam which was only about 45mins away on the train. There were only 5 of us on the tour which was great because it meant we could almost pick and choose what we wanted to see. We rode through the town first and rode under the Jager gate – the inspiration for the Jagermeister logo! I wasn’t quick enough to take a photo of it though!
There are lots of palaces and the parks and lakes were beautiful. One of the more famous palaces was Sans Souci (means No worries).

It was quite modest for a palace; it looked like you could actually live in it. It turned into a lovely sunny day so we went to a beer garden for lunch. Beer and schnitzel – delicious! I love German food! We also went for a tour through the Cecilienhof Palace which was where the Potsdam Conference was held at the end of WW2 where they decided deal with Germany so they didn’t start another War!

After getting back to Berlin, I just had enough time to head ‘home’ for a shower and a change for a pub crawl. I managed to convince one of the girls who was staying in my room to join me. The pub crawl was so much fun. Immediately met some great people - yay for single travellers –we’re so much friendlier! Pretty much the whole group were ‘expats’ working in Europe and travelling on the weekends – also meant they were around my age. The pub crawl consisted of visiting 4 pubs with free shots in each pub and drink specials and we got a carton of beer to share while we waited for everyone.

Absolute bargain for 12euros! Had a fabulous time and definitely must do more pub crawls in other cities. I didn’t stay too long at the last club but still only got home at about 1am!

The next morning I had another bike tour of the city booked in so I had to drag my hungover self out of bed to be on time. Luckily there was a Starbucks nearby and I managed to consume enough coffee to get me through. The bike tour was great – saw all of the major sites.

Brandenburg gate, Holocaust memorial, Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, where Hitler’s bunker used to be, Parliament buildings, Tiergarden.

It was great to see and touch all this history that you learn about in the classroom. We had lunch at a beer garden in Tiergarden. Another beer and schnitzel – yummy! We spent a lazy afternoon sitting on the grass on the island of museums.

Now when we got back I looked at my watch and it was 4.30pm and I needed to be at the airport at 6.30pm. I thought I had enough time to quickly go see the eastside gallery before I went to the airport. So hopped on the train out there and the next time I look at my watch it was 5.30pm and I was on the other side of Berlin – I don’t know where the time went! SO long story short I ended up missing my flight and having to pay 250Euros for a flight out the next morning at 6am which meant another night in Berlin and a very early start. A very expensive lesson to learn! It was very lucky that I had such a fabulous weekend otherwise I would have bawled my eyes out about it.