Frohe Ostern (Happy Easter!) in Berlin

(by Peter Hoskin)

Again, my apologies for the delay of posts.. I have no excuse.

Wow. Berlin. What a weekend! I think it was agreed between Brendan, Jae, and myself that Berlin is a city and a weekend that we will never forget. Ever. Particularly Jae, but you can ask him about that :). We spent this past Easter 6500 kilometres away from home, in one of the most unique and cultured cities in Europe!

We had literally been planning this trip since day one. We said that on Easter weekend we would go north to Berlin and meet up with Stefan who is from the capital (Stefan is one of the Germans who came to Canada last fall). Finally the end of March was near and plans were forming. We decided not to take the super-high-speed ICE train, but take the slower "regional" trains. This saved us a fortune (about 200 Euros!), but the trade off was it took an extra 3 hours to get there.

Jae had high expectations for Berlin. I caught this quote from him during the train ride: "My expectation for Berlin is Munich multiplied by 3 plus total Switzerland multiplied by 2 plus Prague multiplied by 0.7." So the bar was very high, and we were about to find out just how awesome Berlin really is!

Brendan and Jae came over to my place on the Thursday night and we got an early start on Friday morning, intending to catch the 5:59 train towards Nürnberg. Of course that was the train that had technical problems and just did not show up. So we caught the next one 20 minutes later, and therefore missed our connection in Nürnberg. Not the greatest start to the weekend, but we weren't even mad.

So 9 hours later we rolled into the Berlin Hauptbanhof (main station), which is actually a really amazing building! We made our way to our hostel, the Industriepalast (I highly recommend this one), located in the east side of the city, very close to the East Side Gallery. The building was an old warehouse that had been renovated and was actually quite modern-looking inside. Jae and Brendan had heard of a good Vietnamese restaurant so we went for some pho. The place was called Monsieur Vuong and I think this was my first time having Vietnamese cuisine. It was pretty good! It may also have been my first time using chop sticks.. but I bailed early and used the fork :) I need to work on that skill!

That night we met up with Stefan for some Berlin nightlife. While hanging out, Stefan drew a walking path for us and labeled some of the things to see on a map that was given to us at the hostel. The rest of the night was off the record (but you should ask us about it :)

Saturday was an early morning and we intended to follow Stefan's plan along the main street in Berlin. Major hits of the day included the East Side Gallery, the Brandenburg Gate, and a Volkswagen show room, just to name a few. We walked a lot that Saturday. A lot. Here is a picture of us in front of the gate (the fourth guy is Adrian, a friend of Jae's from Eurocopter who joined us for the day).

This is a funny picture of a guy in a lederhosen-morph-suit standing in front of a beer-table-bicycle. Only in Germany!

We also found the Canadian Embassy and Jae pulled out his flag for this pic. We were rocking the Canada gear the whole weekend!

By supper time we were ready for a good hearty German meal. But the restaurant we chose based on a tripadvisor recommendation was quite expensive, so we moved on. Then we found a super hipster restaurant which was also expensive and walked out of there as well. Then we found an authentic German restaurant but it was packed with people, too bad. So we settled on an Argentinean steakhouse where we had some steak. Jae was unimpressed by the portion size, but I enjoyed my turkey steak with mozerella and pineapple (a weird combination, but it was good!).

Sunday was not an early morning, but we were able to pack a lot into the day. First stop was the Ritter Sport Schokowelt (that's Chocolate World for all you non-German-speakers). I have never seen so many chocolate bars in one place! We took some cool pics and each picked up 2kg of chocolate goodness. I have never purchased so much chocolate at one time in my life! Here's Jae with the bag of chocolate:

And some other chocolates that we found.. like I said, a lot!

As a side note, Jae said that he has consumed more chocolate in the three months since he's been in Germany than in the rest of his life combined! It is so good and so cheap :)

Next on our list was the German national history museum. We scored a sweet student discount and said we would only spend 2 hours in the building. This was one thing Jae was really looking forward to, as I have discovered he is a big history buff. The museum explained German history from Roman times right up to the present. Therefore, there was a lot of stuff to look at and read. What I found interesting were the old maps of Europe and the world and how the countries (and continent proportions?!) changed through time. Two hours came and went and we were approaching three. Jae was only a quarter of the way through, but we called it at that. He even seemed relieved that we came to get him! It was time for some currywurst!

Currywurst is basically cut up sausage with ketchup and curry powder, but it is a classic Berlin food. There was a stand selling it hot, just outside the museum so we each got some. We later went in search of one of the famous Berlin currywurst restaurants, but it was closed :(

Another unique tourist attraction from Berlin in the Buddy Bear. Actually there are hundreds of them around the city, and Jae tried to take pictures of them all. We must have seen close to twenty!

There were a few more things on our list and we wanted to enjoy the beautiful weather (not actually, it was cold the whole time). We visited the holocaust memorial which was quite solemn. And also Checkpoint Charlie, another historic location from the Cold War. That night we went out to Andel's hotel and went up to the Skybar where we could watch the sun set on a cloudy Berlin skyline, and watch the city light up.

Monday was an early morning as we wanted to grab some breakfast before our train home. We also each picked up a Berlin t-shirt at a souvenir shop. Then it was time to go back to the Hauptbanhof where we searched all over for the 'Berliner' doughnuts but came up empty handed. But we got to look around the big station! A short (read 'long') eight hours later we were back in Nürnberg and going our separate ways. I was home at 9 I think and had been on the rails since 11:30.


[extra info here!] For those of you who didn't understand Brendan's last post, let me explain. 
I think the first three or four times I saw Jae after he arrived in Germany he would tell me a bit about his town of Donauwörth. It was usually a few fun facts and history tidbits. But it seemed that he would always include something like "... and Donauwörth is the smallest city that has ICE stop..." The next time I saw him he was telling us about the monestary where he lives and I came in with "Did you know [pause] that Donauwörth is the smallest city with ICE?"  Brendan and I burst out laughing. From then it became an ongoing joke between us. Now you know :)