Country count: 16! Thats right, we made it to Berlin Germany- Our 16th country! We took a 3 hour bus ride from Bansko to Sofia Bulgaria. A side note on the bathrooms we stopped at on the bus ride- it is my personal belief that if you have to pay to use the restroom, it should not be a pit toilet. Yuck. Anyway, we got to Sofia, where we met our old friend, Eren Can, who graciously allowed us to crash on his couch for the night before we flew out of the Sofia airport. We went and grabbed some dinner with him and talked about our travels, including our trip to Istanbul (his hometown) and his work and school- he is currently working on his master’s degree wile working full time! We ran into a few other Americans- always a trip for us!- a man from Chicago who had been living in Sofia for 2 years and a girl from New York whose family came from Bulgaria. We all had a good time chatting and they all tried to help us work on our Bulgarian, which was not very successful. It was a fun evening! We excused ourselves and headed back to Eren’s apartment where we met his flatmate, Bella, and her girlfriend. They are thinking about going to visit the US and asked us about some of the various places they were thinking about. It was fun to get to be the expert on something again, it seems like since we left the US we are usually one step behind and are relying on others to be the experts for us. We had a lovely evening, talking late into the night, which unfortunately meant it felt like our heads had just hit the pillows when our alarm went off. They were kind enough to call us a cab and direct the cab to the correct terminal at the airport (apparently, cabs in Sofia have a reputation for ripping off people who don’t speak the language). And before we knew it, we were landing in Berlin!
We spent our first night in Berlin wandering around the Alexanderplatz Christmas market- our first of many! It was wonderful! In the middle of the city, it has a very fair like atmosphere. There are rides and carnival games, an ice skating rink and plenty of seating around tables with a roaring fire in the middle for warmth. There are sweet stalls selling stollen, cookies, chocolates and more, there are stalls selling foods from sausages and breads, mulled wine and curry wurst (essentially, a delicious sausage covered with curry ketchup). They were stalls with ornaments and other artisan goods, stalls with scarves and other winter wear. It was absolutely amazing! we only wandered around for about an hour as it was really, really, really cold!!
The next day, we wandered around the city enjoying the sights and sounds and especially the Christmas decorations- they really go all out here, it was absolutely incredible to see the lights and santas and wreaths and the christmas trees on almost every block. We both agreed that Berlin does a way better job of decorating for Christmas than just about anywhere else we have been. There are also a lot of bikes, every business had a bike rack and they were all surprisingly full, considering that it didn’t get above freezing the entire time we were here. Every sidewalk had a bike lane (which I inadvertently walked in numerous times and each time was almost crushed to death by a biker. Fortunately, the bikes here are well equipped with bells and I was warned by the bell and was able to get out of the way in time). There are also tons of Christmas markets, some of them are very tiny, only a few stalls and some are huge. The Potsdamer Platz Christmas market even had a giant slide for sledding down. All of the places had tons of food- from different sausages and pretzels to Chinese noodle dishes- and Glühwein, the delicious mulled wine that warms you up from your toes when it is below freezing.
That night we were super excited, as we had a special dinner date: our friend Guada from Argentina! We couch surfed at the home of Guada and her husband Rodrigo in Bariloche way back in August. While we were there, Guada mentioned she would be in Berlin for 3 months to do work for her pHD in physics. So we emailed her when we got here and agreed to meet up. We had planned on meeting at Ritter Sport Coffee shop- a famous German chocolate shop… unfortunately, they were closed. So we wandered around for a while, chatting and found ourselves near Alexanderplatz again. We checked out the world clock (Denver is on it!!) and warmed up in a store nearby while gameplanning what to do next. We ended up at a beerhall called Hofbräu Haus where we had a delicious dinner of sausages and sauerkraut, meatballs and mashed potatoes and rye bread! It was so wonderful to see Guada and hear about her adventures here in Berlin, while it was not quite everything she was hoping (the doctor she came to work with was very busy so she ended up working with a post-doc student) but she was enjoying her time here and trying to make the most of it. It was so fun to meet up with friend from Argentina in Berlin- we felt so international!
The next day we got up and took a train ride out to visit part of the Berlin wall. I was expecting the Berlin wall to be bigger, and in a straight line. It kinda meanders around the different neighborhoods, snaking its way through the city. It is actually 2 walls with a space of varying distance between the two walls. One wall designates the edge of the east side, the other wall designates the edge of the west side of Berlin. I also thought it was interesting because there are still parts of it all over the city in various stages of decay and covered in graffiti. In one section it is, ironically, surrounded by a fence to protect it. The area we went to was near a church with a graveyard that had been split in two by the wall. While most of the wall is gone these days, it is still possible to walk the entire length of it, there are bricks following the path of the wall throughout Berlin.
Next up was a walking tour of Berlin. Even though it was in the low 20’s, we had a big group. It was an excellent tour, our guide was very passionate about her adopted city (she grew up in Dresden, but her family was from East Berlin. She was 2 years old when the wall fell and doesn’t remember anything from that time. She moved back to Berlin at 19). We saw the Brandenburg Gate, which became iconic during the fall of the wall, but has been around for hundreds of years. It is so beautifully decorated because it was the gate royalty rode through to go to their hunting grounds in Tiergarten.
We visited the Holocaust monument, a haunting park full of concrete blocks. At first, the blocks are small and don’t seem like much, but as you walk further in, the blocks get higher and closer together until it is slightly disorienting and overwhelming. People pass in front of you, but only for a second. You hear footsteps and voices, but rarely does the person making the noises materialize. It’s like being in there with ghosts. It is an interesting experience. Not without controversy (it’s just concrete blocks! Or, no one will get it-in fact, the artist never said what it meant- or, the money should be spent on keeping the concentration camps open for visitors) the monument ultimately does what it should, gets people talking and probably thinking about the holocaust.
Across the street from the monument we visited a parking lot. Plain and unassuming, surrounded by high rise apartments no one would ever guess anything of note had happened in this area. In fact, 10 meters beneath where we stood was Hitlers bunker, the one in which he ultimately killed himself. The bunker was destroyed and no marker to indicate its presence exists in hopes that it will not be a gathering place for neo-nazis or other crazy people. We visited buildings with nazi architecture, of which only 3 still exist. And we, of course, stopped at the wall and saw Checkpoint Charlie (the crossing point from East Berlin to West Berlin). The original Checkpoint Charlie was torn down in the 1990,s but when tourists kept looking for it, a replica was built int the exact spot- in 2000 (not exactly authentic).
We ended at a university who had many famous alumni, including Albert Einstein. It was also the site of a massive book burning (and by students, of all people!) in 1932, right as the Nazi party came to power. Underneath the plaza in front of the library was a monument to this event with a quote from 1820 with the sentiment that when books are burned, bodies follow soon after, a prophetic warning if one ever existed! The monument was a large, empty room, full of empty bookshelves. There was exactly enough space for the 20,000 books that were burned in 1933. The Berlin walking tour was definitely more focused on the events of the 20th century, but so much has happened there in the 20th century, it was exactly what we wanted to hear about. It is so crazy that a city as modern and bustling as Berlin was split in half up until only 25 years ago. It was a great tour, very informative and moving as we learned the history of this beautiful city!
After our tour we stopped at Berlin’s most famous doner shop- Mustafa’s Gemuse Kebaps. The doner was actually invented in Berlin, and we had the best in Berlin, so we had the best in the world!?!? Yes. It had 3 kinds of sauce, tons of fried veggies (potatoes, zucchini, carrots – ew- and onions), fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and onions and topped off with a squeeze of lemon juice and a crumble of feta cheese. Delish! We wanted to go to more Christmas markets, but we had been out in the bitter cold for the better part of 5 hours and the thought of being outside for any longer was a little too much for our poor little bodies to bear! So we went back to our hotel and watched a Christmas movie before heading to bed early so we could get to the airport in time to catch our flight to Oslo!
Look what we spotted at Mustafa’s!
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