Headline: Umbrella Perished in Berlin

Allan, my boyfriend, visited from New York to see me before I embark on the ship, so that meant going full out on the tourist bucket list. First item: Day Trip to Berlin!

4:45

We woke up to make our 6:45 am bus. Three hours later, we arrived at this sketchy, extremely under construction bus station two miles away from the town center. Welcome to Berlin?

Thankfully, we easily mastered the transportation system (Allan mastered the transportation system.), got to where we needed to be, and officially began our trip.

10:00

We purchased day-passes for a hop-on hop-off bus service that drove us to all of the major attractions of Berlin. This ended up being the best decision of our lives because it was a brisk, windy, 38 degrees Fahrenheit and raining. These buses acted as our prepaid taxis that allowed us to explore at will, complete with free headphones and cheesy commentary ("According to the youthful tourists, the Brandenburg Gate is a major selfie stick attraction!" "Well, Hans, if you had let me finish telling them the history of the Gate-" "I think you have said enough, Harold, you snob!").

I swear it was an accident!

The bus tour initially drove along Tiergarten Park past all of the embassies, which were gigantic in comparison to the Upper East Side brownstone embassies I am used to. Further down the way, we saw the German philharmonic, a few museums, and Keith Haring's The Boxer. We got off the bus to go take a closer look; the statue looked completely different depending upon the angle you stood at! Also, I matched.

11:30

We then found a cappuccino for Evy and began walking towards the Berlin Wall Exhibit (Allan led us towards the Berlin Wall Exhibit.). I realized that we were following two cobblestoned lines in the street that were zig-zagging all over the place. My guess was that these lines were a way to commemorate where the wall once stood. My hunch was correct. As we passed Checkpoint Charlie (the best-known crossing point between East and West Berlin), the Wall appeared on top of that cobblestoned line.

12:30

I had been looking forward to the Berlin Wall because I was curious about the Germans' take on Hitler, WWII, and the Gestapo. It turns out they took a very scientific approach; the Topography of Terror exhibit explained step-by-step how the rise of the Nazi Party was able to occur. The Wall itself... what can I say? Staring at this concrete barrier with "WHY?"

graffitied upon it's surface only made me think about how close the United States is to essentially doing the same thing. I wonder how long it has been since our politicians have taken a history lesson on WWII and the Cold War.

CURRYWUST BREAK: I had a vegan one!

13:30

Our next stop gave me hope. If we do end up building a wall, I hope that artists across nations will come to leave their mark on it like they have in the East Quarter of Berlin. There stands about three kilometers of Wall covered in art, one

side with commissioned, the other with pieces and tags. Here are some of my favorites:

The only downside was the weather. While we were walking, Allan's umbrella perished, my coat was waterproof no longer, and my hands went from wet and icy to solid ice.

14:30

At this point, we were getting a bit worn out. We quickly took pictures with the Berlin TV Town and Neptune Fountain (look at the netting, how cool is that!?) at Alexanderplatz.

15:00

Next, we headed to the Berlin Cathedral Church. This church was gorgeous, and featured little audio stations that explained the representations of the shiftings of religions in the original German city-states. We climbed all 267 stairs to the top viewing gallery! I was super proud of Allan because he does not do heights.

Another cool thing about the Berlin Cathedral Church was the model museum! Here, models and casts of the museum and it's decor stood in a gallery with a view of the pleasure garden below. Allan was all over it. My father would have had a field day!

16:30

The bus then drove us to the Brandenburg Gate, an impressive structure that reminded me of the Prospect Park Gate in Brooklyn. We chose the not-so-broken umbrella for this picture.

We swapped iPhones with another couple who also wanted a picture!

17:00

We HAD to stop for food. It was an emergency. The cosy spot we chose out of convenience turned out to be one of Trip Advisor's recommended restaurants for Bavarian food! Allan ordered a goulash soup, while I ordered a potato soup that said "vegetarian or sausage" next to it. While waiting for the soups, Allan and I shared a traditional wheat beer, which did not disappoint. However, when the soups arrived, mine was swimming with sausage. The best part? The server decided to fight us on the fact that I had not specified which version of the soup I had wanted. If you have read my previous blog post featuring a pizza restaurant in Hamburg, you know that German servers just don't care about you. So, I ate around the sausage (I tried one and didn't like it.).

After confirming where our bus would theoretically pick us up (Allan found the location where the bus would actually pick us up.), we prepared for our final stop. We were cold and exhausted, and we risked the bus not picking us back up if we hopped-off, so we took some rainy pictures of the Victory Column from the bus. Our awe of the monument was not affected in the slightest.

18:30

DINNER! The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was r i n g i n g as we dragged ourselves into a Bavarian restaurant at the bottom of some shopping mall. This

restaurant was miraculously open on a Sunday, and I am so glad it was because the food was ridiculous; I had my first dark beer that I actually enjoyed, Allan ordered a pig knuckle that he couldn't finish because it was literally a dinosaur pig, and I had breaded dumplings swimming in mushrooms and cream. What. A. Meal.

Dinner Conversation: Allan: "You know, you're bad at directions. Like, very bad. It is kind of concerning." Evy: "Yeah. Did you ever hear about the time I got lost on a one-aisle plane?"

Unfortunately, the final stretch of the evening was spent back at the sketchy bus terminal for two hours because we had to wait until 21:45 for our bus. We arrived back in Hamburg at 1:30 am, taxied home, and knocked out. A long, rainy, historical, successful trip for us both!