Ich bin ein day tripper.

So Tory's been here for almost five days and I've been doing all the touristy things with him that I've been putting off for the past six weeks. We've been to the top of Petrin Hill on Klaus' disco funicular, explored Prague Castle, basically moved into the Globe for brunch and happy hour purposes, went to the malls repeatedly, finally saw Nine together, found another English-language bookstore, crossed the Charles Bridge, saw the Lennon Wall, enjoyed Malostranská, and visited the Kafka Museum.

We ran out of stuff to do by Wednesday.

Hence why I dragged him, slightly kicking and screaming, across the border to Berlin for what is coming to be known as Klaus' disco day trip. Took a bus that left at 11:55 Wednesday night and arrived just before 5 a.m. on Thursday. We went pretty much non-stop at that point and honestly, I think I'm out of stuff to do in Berlin. Considering we were physically in Berlin for all of 14.5 hours, I think we did a pretty admirable job. I've turned seeing a week's worth of stuff in a day or two into an art form.

We took the U-bahn in from the bus station, made it to Alexanderplatz, realized that nothing would be open at 5 a.m. and thusly headed to the Hauptbahnhof. Had a lovely breakfast at McDonald's, the only place open, and booked our tickets home in broken German. From there we took the LONG way (unknowingly) to the Brandenburg Gate. The Brandenburg Gate is way smaller than I had pictured it to be, but it's right next to the U.S. Embassy and we briefly considered going in and asking for a map. Consular services have been extended to help quasi-backpackers.

We kind of stumbled upon the Reichstag accidentally and just beat the line to go up into the weird, modern dome on top. The audio guide, dubbed Sir Lee, gave us a fairly thorough explanation of the landmarks visible from the dome but literally as we were leaving the line had tripled ten-fold. This still doesn't top the line that we passed on our way back to the train station in the evening where it looked like it was about to go off the Reichstag's property, but it was pretty epic.

We found our way to the Holocaust memorial, which is more or less a bunch of stone cubes of various sizes and, of course, very much open to interpretation. Berlin, like Munich, certainly isn't trying to hide its role in the Holocaust; in fact, by the philharmonic, there is a sign and very large plaque regarding the fact that the T4 Aktion murders took place on that spot. The spot of Hitler's bunker was near there so we found our way and it's just a large parking lot with yet another plaque. Must be weird to park your BMW or live in what I'm sure is prime real estate over Hitler's bunker, but that's the charm (?) of Germany, I guess.

We wandered down Unter den Linden to Bebelplatz, where the first major book burning occurred in 1933 (and upon doing further research, we didn't actually go into the actual platz, so no points to me or Tory). We went from there over the river and through the rest of Berlin where we made it to Alexanderplatz and then decided to go to Wombat's, pretend we were staying there and jack a free map or two. Our diabolical scheme worked and I got the most amazing falafel since Israel. Point one, Germany.

We went to Checkpoint Charlie (so touristy), the Topography of Terror (an open-air museum that shows the locations and functions of every Nazi-era building), and then Tory hung at Starbucks to rest while I wandered over to the Jewish Museum. Unlike Munich's this one is epic and HUGE, and, true to form, packed with obnoxious Italian tourists whom I just can't seem to escape. The museum didn't really teach me anything new but it was interesting and, of course, I left with two new books. I wanted to make it to the Stasi Museum too but it was way too far east to make it there on our epic day trip, so that's for another time. No going that far into the former USSR.

At this point it was only 2 p.m. and I was almost done with my list. We went over to what was once the Jewish quarter and saw the Neue Synagogue (beautiful) and the destroyed Jewish cemetary (not beautiful). The only graves the Nazis left were those of Moses Mendelssohn and the few tombstones that were really stuck to the wall, so it was kind of haunting. It looks like a small, very green park now.

From there I dragged Tory to the other side of the Tiergarten because I wasn't leaving Berlin without seeing the Bendlerblock, from where the July 20th plot on Hitler's life was attempted. I'm a big fan of the movie Valkyrie (no judgment) and I'm actually writing a research paper on the German resistance so naturally I had to visit the German resistance memorial. This was the one museum without English explanations so we wandered aimlessly for a few minutes before realizing we could get a free English audio guide. Win. It was very interesting and I'm glad I went, especially as I probably wouldn't have been able to make it there next weekend when I'm back with the group. Tory deserves a gold star for putting up with all of my history-major dorkiness for the day.

We went to dinner (strudel was involved) and then nearly missed our train because the fast food workers decided to take their sweet time when we had a train to be on in five minutes but all was well. We jumped onto the first train, thought two couchettes were ours, rejoiced, and then were kicked out when it was determined that it wasn't our car. I hadn't actually thought that we'd be getting breakfast with our 39 euro tickets but it was nice for a few minutes.

We wandered the length of five cars and then finally found our compartment. It was empty except for this THING covered by a sheet, and words really can't do it justice but we seriously thought it was a person for the longest time and were so freaked out and tried to switch our compartment and it was terrifying and ridiculous. The only way it can be explained is by saying it's like someone rigged an elaborate bed sheet-tent and went catatonic afterward. The Deutsche Bahn employee was freaked out too but she eventually determined that it was just a bike underneath. Crisis averted. Of course, the humorless Czech conductor who took over at the border did not appreciate it the same way she did and I don't think he believed us when we said it wasn't ours.


This is the blob. We were terrified.

It took about an hour to get home from the sketchy train station. This trip included coach bus, smelly Prague bus, tram, transcontinental train, taxi, underground, overground, and basically everything but rocket-powered jet pack. But we survived. Ich bin ein Berliner and all that jazz.

Next week in Berlin (as I am going back with school): DIRTY DANCING: DAS ORIGINAL MUSICAL. I have no idea if it's in German or English but it doesn't matter anyway as there's no way I'll be sober for it. There are no words for my excitement.