Berlin, Germany

June 12-16, 2003

After leaving Lemmer’s childhood home near Dusseldorf, in western Germany, we were eager to step foot in historical Berlin on the far eastern side, as well as see our friend Ben, who has been living in Germany since we all graduated from GW in 2001. Neither NikiAnne nor I had ever been to Berlin before; we were anxious to see for ourselves the history that we have read and been told for so long.

The 7-hour car ride was cramped and uneventful, so we all were counting down the minutes until we could be rid of our booty of stinking cheese that we had brought with us from Marburg. Every time we got out of the car to stretch, we practically had to force each other back in the car, the smell was so overpowering.

We finally made it to Berlin. After a couple minutes of apprehension, we found Ben’s apartment, which is in the up-beat and lively neighborhood of Prince Laurberg in what was East Berlin. Conveniently, the friend’s place where Lemmer and Mira were staying was right down the street. East Berlin, though still with some rough areas, for the most part has been dubbed the up-and-coming part of the capital with numerous sidewalk cafes, ice cream shops, little boutiques, and, best of all, late-night kebab stands. A lot of students and young professionals are moving to the area and the plethora of bars and live-music hangouts attest to this fact. Though it is ‘up-and-coming,’ East Berlin still has a long way to go before it even comes close to resembling its brother in the west. You can immediately tell when walking between the two sides which side you are in fact in.

After arriving late on Thursday night, June 12^th, NikiAnne and I spent all of the following day seeing some of the more well-known and spectacular sights of Berlin. We walked from Ben’s apartment to Alexanderplotz, one of the many squares in Berlin, but the main one in East Berlin. From there, we strolled along Unter den Linden, taking in the sights and trying to get our bearings. Our calculated wanderings led us to the Brandenburg Gate, which was one of the more famous dividing points between East and West Berlin. Entering from the east, we walked under its massive archway and were now officially in West Berlin, staring at the Reichstag, Germany’s Parliament, which sat just a few hundred meters to our right.

We were told that the top of the Reichstag offers one of the best views of all of Berlin, so we made our way over to inquire. Unfortunately, about two thousand other people had the same idea, and we had little desire to wait in a few hour line in the summer heat. Rather, we cut our losses and headed for Checkpoint Charlie, which on the map looked like a hop, skip and a jump away, but in reality was about 45 minutes by foot.

As we said before, the historical aspect of Berlin was one of the most interesting things for us, and this fact was cemented in our minds when, walking to Checkpoint Charlie, we stumbled across a block-long section of preserved Berlin Wall. It is one of the few sections that still remains, and was quite eerie (and rather difficult) to picture what it must have been like just under 15 years ago. Looking around at the Wall, wondering what picture to take, something jumped out at me. Directly in front of where I was standing, written in black graffiti was ‘Andy.’ Pretty freaky, huh?

On the other side of the Wall was an outdoor exhibit called the Topography of Terror. It turns out that this exhibition was not about the Berlin Wall, but instead about the rise of the Gestapo and the SS troops in Nazi Germany. The exhibit was set up and displayed in what were the jail cells in the basement of the building that formerly housed the headquarters of the Gestapo. These cells where many people were held in captivity for ‘questioning’ are the only remaining remnants of the building.

Exhausted both mentally and physically (if you look at a map of Berlin, you will understand why), we made our way finally to Checkpoint Charlie, the most famous transit point between East and West Berlin. We wanted to do a few more museums nearby but the Topography of Terror exhibit was so mentally and emotionally taxing that we had to call it a day. As evening approached and our stomachs growled, we started our long walk back to Ben’s apartment.

The next day we took the metro train out to Potsdam with Ben to see the village and summer palace. The village is really quaint; we spent some time popping in and out of the various shops that lined the cobblestone streets. About a 20-minute walk from the village is the park and palace of Potsdam, which is essentially a very large au-natural forest-like park, perfect for long walks, with guest palaces nestled sporadically throughout the enclosed area. At the very end of the pathway is the primary palace. Most of the palaces serve as housing for important foreign diplomats when they visit. I guess we weren’t important enough to be invited in for tea at any of the palaces so we had a nice lunch in the shade on the grass next to one of the palaces, and then continued our stroll through the palace grounds.

We took the 45-minute train ride back to Berlin to meet up with Lemmer, Mira, and their friends at a Syrian restaurant. The food was great, though the seating arrangement (nine people to two tables, sitting on cushions) was a bit uncomfortable for some. We then headed out for a night on the town in the area of East Berlin that surrounded Ben’s house.

The night ended with NikiAnne, Ben, his roommate Marcus, myself and another random person all up on the roof of their building taking in the sites of Berlin for one last time (well, the last time for this trip anyway). When the sky was getting brighter from the sun rising, we called it quits.

The next day, Sunday, our final day in Berlin, was spent mostly packing and tying up some loose ends, and with time to kill, went with Marcus (Ben’s Bavarian roommate) to a Thai barbeque that takes place every Sunday in a park on the other side of Berlin. Marcus, a southeast Asian studies major, is studying Thai and met up with some other students who are learning Thai to practice with native Thai speakers, who set up booths, and sell freshly cooked Thai delicacies. It was really interesting to see a Thai woman or a group of them running their booths, as their German husbands sat behind them, sipping beer. But it was a perfect way to eat some really good food and learn a little Thai in preparation for our eventual arrival in Thailand (which should be around January or February, in case you are wondering).

After making our way back to Ben’s apartment to relax for a few hours, we soon said our goodbyes to Ben, Marcus, and Berlin in general, and lugged our backpacks to the airport, about an hour and half metro/bus ride. After a brief scare with my passport at Customs (let’s just say it’s never a good thing when the immigration inspector tells you to wait, and then leaves his booth to go talk to his superior for 10 minutes), we slept a bit in the airport, before our 1am flight to Saint Petersburg, via Moscow.

Not knowing what the future had in store for us in Russia, sitting there in the airport we could only reflect back on the great and smooth time we had in Italy and Germany.

Would Russia be the same?