Student Blogs

A Weekend in Berlin!

May 22nd, 2012 secain13

First of all, I guess it has to be mentioned that I officially have less than a month left here until I go home. I seriously cannot believe that the time went by so fast and I really don’t feel like I’m ready to go home yet. While I certainly miss being with my friends and family, I become very comfortable here! Recently, I have been very busy in terms of travelling and I went to Berlin and London the past two weekends.

I traveled to Berlin with Brooke, who is also studying in León, and even though we only had a short weekend there, we definitely made the most of it. I really enjoyed seeing Berlin, mostly because of the history in the city. I was fascinated by seeing the different monuments, the Brandenburg gate, the Reichstag, the Berlin wall, checkpoint Charlie, and some of the different museums there. Some of the most impressive sights included the Berlin wall memorial, the Topographies of terror exhibit, the Holocaust memorial, and the Jewish Museum. I was intrigued seeing parts of the Berlin wall and hearing more details of how the city was divided because it was something that happened so recently. I couldn’t imagine living in that city and seeing that wall every day. The Holocaust memorial and the Topographies of Terror exhibit offered information about the crimes and atrocities that were committed during Hitler´s regime in Germany. It was definitely very sad to hear about how many people suffered during that time but very interesting at the same time. I also really enjoyed visiting the Jewish Museum in Berlin because it described the entire history and culture of Jewish people in Germany up until the present day and did not only focus on the Holocaust era, although there was a section dedicated to all of those who lost their lives during that time.

We did a lot of walking throughout Berlin and we were really able to see a large part of the city which was great. We also tried plenty of the local food, including bratwurst and curry-wurst, as well as sampled some German beer. This city was different from many of the places that I had visited this year because there were quite as many older buildings because many of them were destroyed or damaged during World War II. It was pretty surreal to walk through the streets and think about how much damage was done to the city from the war.

We did a few walking tours throughout the city thanks to the TripAdvisor City Guides application that I had downloaded on my Ipod touch and it really made a difference in the weekend. I highly recommend downloading this application  when visiting a city because they have free walking tours with history about the city, attractions, and restaurants. It was really useful and helped us get the most out of my short weekend in Berlin!

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