Eins, zwei, drei!!!

Hello! Welcome to my Berlin blog post part eins (1).

Monday December 17th: Krista and I made our way to the Lyon Airport. Regretfully, we took the wrong train, ending up at another station in Lyon. An absurd 14 euro and 20 minute tram ride later we arrive at the airport with several hours to spare. Better safe than sorry. We chill. We hang. We stare at walls. In a couple of hours we are in Berlin! 

Upon arrival we make our way to the nearest S-Bahn we had to buy a ticket. NEWSFLASH: neither Krista nor I can speak/read German. God help us, it may as well have been written in Kanji. We manage to buy an incorrect ticket and get on the train. Starving, we make a detour and have our first German Kebab. Delish. We then make our way to our lovely, awesome, kick ass hostel. 

Fun Fact: While rolling my suitcase through the snow I somehow manage to roll over some dog poo, then proceed to lift my suitcase to carry it (unaware of the poo of course), thus rubbing the bag against my pant leg. You can picture the rest.

Tuesday 18th: Krista and I wake up and decide to start walking toward Brandenburg gate. Hungry, we stop in to a little pastry shop and both order a croissant. Order being the key word as I freaked out realising I don't speak German. I just pointed to the pastry and said "croissant!". Rude and embarassing, score! We walk around, see museum island, Berliner Dom and take loads of pictures. We then make our way to Brandenburg gate to catch up with the 3rd Reich tour. I'm glad in hindsight that we did this tour as we got to see a lot of things I would never have realised were there. Such as: Roma, Homosexual and Jewish memorials, 'Hitler's bunker', Luftwaffe headquarters, Nazi ministry of Propaganda, Berlin Wall, SS and Gestapo ruins, the old Jewish region, cemetary, 'death street', the house of the German 'Schindler'. 4 hours of walking later, we are starving and try to find a famed Mexican restaurant....which was closed. Chinese it is! We go back to the hostel and Cara and Estelle arrive. Much rejoicing.

Fun fact: I ran out of cash the night before, so the entire day Krista was paying for me, as I searched for a bank machine. We finally found one after dinner. After that, they were everywhere! I think they all hid from me.

Wednesday 19th: We all wake up and take the S and or U-bahn to get some food. I have dunkin' doughnuts for the first time! I also have a pastry I could not pronounce. We walk out of the Alexanderplatz station to see...a Christmas market! WOOHOO. We walk around, drink it all in and vow to come back. We then make our way to Brandenburg gate to take the free walking tour of Berlin (as Cara and Estelle had not yet seen anything). We essentially saw all the same things with some more added, such as: Checkpoint Charlie, some pretty churches, the book burning memorial, and the fancy xmas market. We decide to be fancy and go to a prore restaurant for dinner. It was incredibly bizarre as the place was apparently famous, was a huge location but besides 3 other groups, we were the only ones there. I had the famous currywurste (total fusion cuisine) and loved it. We spend a really long time at the restaurant. Atleast 3 hours.

Fun Fact: We hung out at the hostel that night and got in trouble for laughing too loudly. Sorry my joy is harshing your mellow German hostel security guard!

To be continued....