Germany:
From Amsterdam to Germany we took an overnight train and we shared a cabin with four other people all on bunk beds, kayla and I were on the bottom bunks which was nice. We didn’t have to switch trains and it was a straight shot on a high speed over night train to Berlin, at first we only had one person in our cabin who was from France and was on “holiday”. He was a very nice gentleman and spoke fairly good english (compared to how well i speak french it was amazing). He asked our names and when i told him my name was TJ he looked at me funny so i told him it was a nick name. He said (insert heavy french accent) “I’m Xavier, you call me Fox man, that my nick name” as we both laughed for a good couple minutes. We shared stories of all the places we were going and he told us he didn’t like Paris as he was from a small town, when he asked where he should go if he were to come to the US i told him he should come to Ferndale, i’ll show him a good time at the OutLaw Saloon haha.
We arrived in Berlin at 4:30am and our debit cards didn’t work (first minor crisis of the trip) because we had to pay for our EuRail Passes with cash and i’d maxed out my card for ATM withdraws for 24hours. After we found a Taxi that would take a credit card we made our way to our Hostel. Kayla (my lovely yet sometimes very blonde fiance) wrote down the address wrong, she wrote the zip code as the street number so the taxi cab driver dropped us off in front of a gym and we were stuck trying to find our hostel with little help from anyone who spoke english. We managed to find a 24hour internet cafe and made it to our Hostel by 7am and it didn’t open until 9:30am (great right?) so we sat outside for two and a half hours until it opened, we stored our bags and ventured out to discover germany.
The first day we tried some authentic food at a breakfast place right across from our Hostel, The food (i would have never eaten in my life back home) was actually pretty amazing, i tried everything and really liked the curywurst and the meatballs. After we got a good breakfast in our stomach (and i tipped the waiter WAY too much, you should of seen the look on his face when he said “All of it!?” and walked away as i said keep the change) we went back to our hostel and got ready for the day.
A 4 hour tour. We (stupidly) signed up for a Four hour WALKING tour of Berlin. It was amazing but the walking part nearly killed me. We got to see the Berlin wall, the place where Hitlers Bunker was, the Jewish memorial for the Jewish people that were killed in WWII and alot of other amazing buildings that i wont even try to spell. The history itself was awe inspiring and our guide was a history major so i learned more in 4 hours of this tour than i had previously known about WWII from a german perspective.
The second day it was raining so we used that as our chance to go and see some Museums. We went to Museum Island and saw some of the most amazing (but stolen) pieces of Roman, egyptian and Mesopotamian art works. It was a low key day but we were both starting to know our way around Berlin.
"Hard work will set you free" (is the translation if i remember correctly)
The third day (Kaylas Birthday) we had one chance to go to Sachsenhausen Concentration camp, i know not really what you want to do on your birthday right? But kayla was a trooper and we made our way on another tour of this Concentration Camp. This was one of the saddest tours i’ve ever been on and to see first hand the suffering that these people went through and the depths of evil that humans can reach was truly eye opening to me. It is something i think everyone should take a chance to do, keep in mind that (i learned this on this tour) Sachsenhausen was a Concentration camp, this is not the same as an Extermination Camp. They are completely different, Sachsenhausen was used to keep people locked up, all though thousands were killed. Places like Aushwitz were Extermination camps and their sole purpose was to kill in very sadly large numbers of prisoners. I say this so you too can see that although this place was very sad and a very harsh place to live, it wasn’t a tour of gas chambers and torture rooms. Toward the end of the wars (Both WWII and the Cold War) they did start executing people in larger numbers but it wasn’t even a blip on the radar of an extermination camp. The tour guide put us in the mindset of both a guard (which was hard to do) and a local resident outside the concentration camp. He did this to show us how they justified it (which was wrong, but necessary to understand so it wont be repeated) The people living in the city were lied to and told that the people in the concentration camp were real prisoners who committed horrific crimes. All in all this place was very sad to see but i think very important as well.
Berlin as a whole: 8 - Huge amounts of history I could go back and probably see tons more, but you can get all the main things out of the way in two or three days.
The German Language: 5 - Very “Throat-y” i’m not a fan of a language that sounds like you’re trying to hock a loogie every time you say a word...
The attractiveness of the people: 5 - The local people we not attractive
Expensiveness: 6 (not bad) - You can get a good meal at a sit down restaurant for around 20 euros
Sights to see: 8 - The history that surrounds all of Berlin is worth a trip to europe all on its own, if you’re in to WWII and all that stuff, which i am, very much!
Food: 8 - German Pastry’s were amazing, their Orange Juice (not sure why) was to die for and their dinner food was very tasty, not a fan of their salad dressing though.
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