Ich Bin ein Berliner

"I am a Berliner" - JFK in his speech on June 26, 1963 underlining the support of the United States for West Germany

 

This past weekend I went on a trip with Panrimo to Berlin. We were all excited to go, but our panrimo trip "leader" Sam was not so excited for Berlin and our other trip "leader" Iva had never been to Berlin before... That being said we ran into some problems along the way. We left on a bus to Berlin at 7 am on Saturday and arrived around noon. When we got there we quickly realized how little we knew about the Berlin transportation and got lost. By the time we made it to our hostel and ate and were ready to go on Sam's walking tour of the city it was 4 pm. That being said I was pretty excited to get moving and see the city, but I guess some of the other panroamers had a different agenda to see inside all of the bars in Berlin. It made it a frustrating experience as they kept wandering off and we would wait for them. Sam didn't have much to say about Berlin so we ended up splitting off and the people who wanted to see the city were able to so the trip got infinitely better after that. I didn't get as much history and information as I was hoping for this trip, but I think we ended up seeing the big sites so I mostly just have pictures!

 

Berlin is a cool European city because it is relatively new since most of it was destroyed during WW2. It is super modern and has art and really cool and modern buildings, quite the contrary to Prague!

 

 Holocaust Memorial- Sam didn't say much more than that... but my friend who went the last week that the different sized blocks represent 100,000 people of different age groups and there is a lot of symbolism.

 

 Famous Brandenburg Gate

 Parliament building- the few of waited in line to go to the top dome. It ended up being the best part of my trip and free with a free audio tour! The audio tour pointed out many buildings and landmarks in the city and gave a brief history. The top of the dome is open so when it rains or snows the water funnels in through the middle and is somehow convert to electricity! The mirror design is meant to use and channel as much sunlight into the parliament room as to use the least amount of electricity and lights as possible.

 

The dome looks awesome from the outside

Berlin has cute walk and stop signs so I decided to take a picture. I found out later that a lot of people like them because their are whole stores dedicated to the walk and stop merchandise!

 

Berlin Cathedral we found

Famous Berlin TV tower

 

The next day we only had a short amount of time so we saw Charlie Checkpoint and the largest portion of the Berlin Wall which is 600 meters and covered with artwork. Berlin has a brick line running through the entire city where the wall used to be.