3 Days in Berlin

Evening Arrival Dinner at Thai Window Asia

After a relaxing train ride, we arrived in Berlin just in time for dinner. We checked into our hotel (yes hotel!) and got right onto Yelp! to see where we could get some good, cheap eats. Yelp! pointed us to a tiny Thai restaurant called Thai Window Asia . We arrived to the tiny restaurant to be greeted by quite possibly the best meal we have had on our trip. The owner (who also does all the cooking) explained to us that the restaurant is not his career, but since he is a traditionally trained Thai chef, he decided to open up this small restaurant as a side business. You can tell this man loves to cook because the food was SO delicious. We ate our hearts out, and the owner came out with vodka shots for us at the end of our meal. We were too caught up in the moment (and hungry) to take any pictures, but here’s a link to the restaurant’s Yelp! page if you’re ever in Berlin! http://www.yelp.com/biz/thai-window-asia-berlin

Day 1: All-Day Berlin City Bike Tour

The next day, we woke up bright and early to join an all-day city bike tour. The tour specifically focused on Nazi Germany and the Third Reich, so needless to say we knew this was going to be a heavy day. We met up with our tour guide and boarded our bikes, ready to learn more about the impact WWII and the Third Reich had on Berlin and what life was like for Berliners during this terrible time in history.

One of our first stops was at a regular apartment building on a beautiful tree lined residential street. Our tour guide encouraged us to get off our bikes and take a closer look at the building. When we got closer, we could see the walls of the building were riddled with small, deep craters. The marks in the wall were from shrapnel during the war.

We travelled on through the streets and made a few more stops (including Humboldt University of Berlin, where 20,000 books were taken and burned by the Nazi regime in 1933) before reaching the Holocaust memorial, also known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This memorial truly left an impact on us.

We also travelled to one of the bunker locations built during WWII. Half of it has been turned into a museum while the other half is a haunted house…

Beside the bunker was a former train station (Berlin Anhalter Bahnhof), used to deport about a third of Berlin’s Jewish population during the war. All that remains is the facade, as the rest of it was destroyed by bombing raids.

After hearing about so much of Berlin’s heavy history, our tour guide lightened things up for us by taking us through Berlin’s beautiful Tiergarten, its largest inner-city park. The park was so relaxing – we could have rode our bikes around it all day!

There is so much more of this tour that we want to retell, but we’ll attempt to detail the rest through pictures.

After our bike tour, we took it easy for the remainder of the night, and decided that we would keep things light the following day – a trip to the zoo was in store!

Day 2: Berlin Zoo, Berlin’s Shopping District and Beer Exchange

Berlin Zoo

We started this day with an amazing buffet breakfast, including giant, delicious coffees, before heading to Berlin’s city zoo.

We had a great time just leisurely touring around the zoo and admiring how beautiful it was. Many of the animal’s enclosures were built to resemble their natural habitats, and used natural methods to separate the people from the animals, as opposed to fences and glass.

We spent several hours there, and then we headed out to Berlin’s shopping district which was conveniently located beside the zoo, much to Desta’s approval. We mostly window shopped, as we decided our money may be better spent on beer…

Beer Exchange: Die Berliner Republik

This was not just any beer purchasing experience that we were after. We were headed to a beer exchange called Die Berliner Republik. Essentially, this bar works similar to the stock market. The bar is filled with screens showing you the current trading price of each beer they have on tap. You have five minutes to place your order at the current prices, and then the beer trade closes for one minute. If a certain beer becomes very popular during the ordering session, it’s price will increase when the trade reopens a minute later. Less popular beers will decrease in price – you get the jist!

We did a great job at playing the markets (basically just drinking whatever beer was the least popular) and had a blast! We came back home almost in disbelief that the following afternoon, it would be time to say goodbye to Berlin.

Day 3: East Side Gallery

In the morning, we wasted no time, and headed straight to the most famous remaining section of the Berlin Wall, the East Side Gallery. Here, the wall is covered in graffiti art, and visitors flock to not only view this artwork, but to also get a visualization of a separated East and West Germany. We walked along the wall and made our way to the famous Fraternal Kiss. We also got a chance to go behind the  East wall and wander in “no-man’s land”, an area separating the east and west walls, used for soldiers and tanks to patrol.

After our visit to the wall, it was time for us to say farewell to Berlin. There is so much history in this city, and we realize that we barely scraped the surface. This is definitely a city we would love to return to someday – but for now, it’s London calling!