Can't Drive Out the Way We Drove In

Only about a week late isn't so bad, especially for a trip as big as Berlin. 1–4 October was the first long weekend, an excellent chance to travel farther from the secondary or tertiary home that is Harlaxton. But first, there was a giant British Studies exam that basically everyone had to take. Tuesday night (the 29th) meant a super study session, which I deemed rather worth it due to the fine company. I mostly studied with Chelsey Tompkins, Ben Deutsch, and JR Fralick, and after ordering pizza with them at 11pm, getting delirious, getting chastised by the RA for being too loud after quiet hours, discovering the significance of the room—it was good to feel comfortable and befriended. More studying with Chelsey Wednesday morning and finally the test, which was by no means easy.

When it was over, I had about an hour to shower, pack for Berlin, and eat dinner before the taxi came to take me and Bernard to the train station. Then we had a fire drill. Terror at not being able to locate our hostel's confirmation email and missing the taxi and generally never getting to Germany subsided when we made it to the station in plenty of time. We were on the same train to Stansted Airport (outside London) as six or eight other Harlaxton students, who were already drinking and would keep it up until midnight at the earliest. I don't know how (or why) they did it.

I'm told that spending the night in the airport is something everyone should do once, and I agree, but only once, particularly in a group of thirty kids from your school, few of whom have any interest in not being big loud drunk Americans. It was, overall, a long 18 hours of travel that went a little something like this: taxi to Grantham train station, train from Grantham to Stansted (changing at Ely), Stansted all night, flight to Schönefeld Airport of which I was awake for roughly 12 seconds, SXF1 Bus to Südkreuz station, S-Bahn train from Südkreuz to Hohenzollerndamm station, 115 Bus in the wrong direction for about five minutes, 115 Bus in the right direction to Pücklerstraße, two block walk (the second of which was in the Grünewald forest) to our hostel, which was really spectacular. We got the tour of the hostel from a man from Buffalo, and I'm still not sure what he was doing working at a hostel in the woods outside Berlin.Totally wiped from the past 18 hours and from wandering through the forest, we took a significant nap in incredibly comfortable beds. There was practically no one in our hostel, except about six guys with whom we watched part of Pulp Fiction, then went back to our room and watched Death at a Funeral before passing out again.

The last block of the road to our hostel

Friday morning, having taken serious advantage of the free breakfast, Bernard and I headed into town. In order to do this, I had to get us day passes for the S-Bahn, in German. But I did it! There are tons of dogs in Berlin, and they all seem to be walking their people. We made it just on time for our extremely intense four-hour walking tour. We saw tons of important stuff and learned plenty of cool stories about Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Parliament, Checkpoint Charlie, and the fall of the wall. Our guide, Michael, was Canadian and his fall of the wall story was top notch. I don't remember a whole lot of facts from the tour, but I do remember that 90% of Berlin was destroyed in the bombing in WWII. In the middle of the tour, it started raining really hard, but cleared up tolerably without too much damage. I realized, that night, that I was wearing a jacket with a hood.

Our guide at the second-longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall

After the tour, we thought about going to the museum with the Nefertiti exhibit, and while we were trying to decide if it was worth the £4 for just an hour, we ran into five other Harlaxton students. Yeah, in Germany, on the Ireland long weekend. We went with them to a different museum and saw some beautiful art from some seriously legit artists, then parted ways to go find some food.

Upon arrival back in Pariser Platz, we discovered that, as the next day was the 20th anniversary of German Reunification, there was a big festival going on behind Brandenburg Gate! There weren't a ton of people there, but there was a Ferris wheel, a huge stage, and a choir of old guys in red jackets singing some very uplifting-sounding German songs. Flanking the street were rows of booth selling Bratwurst, beer, scarves, crepes, purses, pretzels, and donuts bigger than your face (seriously). I ordered Bernard and myself brats in German and, when we finished them, we bought some huge pretzels (auf Deutsch!) to go on our way out. Yet another skillful navigation of the remarkably well organized Berlin public transit system landed us back at our hostel, where we spent twenty minutes or so talking to the owner, who gave us a huge pitcher of water and mugs and touted Berlin's as the best water in Europe. After a Rostbratwurst and a salty, salty pretzel, I wasn't about the challenge his claim. I fell asleep ten minutes into the movie Passengers, and slept soundly through the night.

Downtown Berlin on Reunification Eve

Initial skepticism about Rostbratwurst and the tiny bun in which it was served soon gave way to delight.

Saturday we went to Schloss Charlottenburg because Bernard loves palaces, but I actually really enjoyed it. The audio-guide in the second part was really interesting, and I learned enough about the palace's original owner, Sophie Charlotte, first queen of Prussia, to name my camera Sophie after her. Her daughters, Friederike and Luisa, were Prussia's most famous princesses, and the statue I saw of them in the museum the day before was copied pretty much everywhere. One section of the palace was almost completely reconstructed, since it had been bombed hardcore, and of course pictures were not allowed, but it was awesome to think that Berliners cared enough about the palace to completely rebuild it. There was a whole room full of china that made me wonder how anywhere else in the world managed to have any at all.

Returning to the city centre, we found that hostel man's claim that no one really cares about Reunification Day was completely false. There were so many people gathered to get in on the fun and see the giant marionettes expected later that afternoon that we literally could not get into the plaza we were headed for. After much deliberation and consultation of our three maps, we found our way to Museum Island via train station sandwiches, and it was suddenly five o'clock again and there was no time to get to the museum of our choice. Defeated, we sat on the steps of the Berliner Dom, a giant beautiful cathedral, and fed crumbs of shortbread to the sparrows gathered there.

The Berliner Dom when the weather finally got lovely

Bernard and I had almost given up on the day. We had really wanted to do our touristy stuff that night—buying postcards and gifts and more German food and trying to find some Berliner Weisse, but it seemed impossible to even get near any of that with all the crowds. Suddenly, we discovered that about an hour from then, the Berliner Dom was holding a vesper service with a special organist, so we decided to go. The inside of the Dom was spectacular—huge, ornate, but not tacky by any account, and we were certainly happy enough to be warm for a while. The service was in German, naturally, and if I barely understood a word I'm sure Bernard was completely lost. We were exhausted and I won't deny I almost fell asleep for a bit, but the organ music was beautiful, and we could at least tell when they were doing the Lord's Prayer enough to chime in in hushed English.

Once it was done, the city centre had cleared out significantly. Now it was still very populated, but not so much that you couldn't move like before. We went through several touristy shops and spent more money than expected, but it is worth it even more if you don't think about the money. Getting into the actual festival was much more complicated than the previous night, and we had to go around several blocks to find the entrance and wait while hoards of people had their bags checked. Security was high because there was a possible threat of attack surrounding the elections of the previous week. The news later that night said there had been tens of thousands of people in downtown Berlin, and we were two of them. We got Rostbratwurst (yes again, but from a different stand), and went on our search for Berliner Weisse, a beer mixed with juice that Morgan had suggested to us, the girls who don't like alcohol, as a less disgusting-tasting option. The quest was extremely easy because, well, we were at a giant party in Berlin looking for beer. So we split one and again, initial skepticism led not to disappointment, as it actually tasted much more like juice than beer. Together, we finished our whopping one drink, and departed to public transit, where at the bus stop we met a very talkative man on his way back from synagogue who asked us about religion, food, and America over about ten minutes. Next stop: watching Fanboys and falling asleep.

Proving we actually got it

Sunday was departure day, but our flight didn't go out until nearly 10pm, so we had a long time to wander about and see the rest of what we could. On the S-Bahn, a man with dreadlocks was playing the guitar. A nun on the train who didn't speak English tried to talk to him, and he said he didn't speak German, and she said in German, "Music-playing is international" and applauded him. I wonder if that included the man in yellow trousers we saw playing the guitar, drum, cymbals, and tambourine simultaneously and covering "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" with maybe the worst singing voice of all time.

On the way to Pariser Platz that morning, we faced the strongest winds I may have ever felt—stronger than on top of Arthur's Seat almost certainly, and they came in gusts out of nowhere and were gone just as fast. We finally made it to the museum with the Nefertiti. Too bad Nefertiti was actually moving to a different museum and we couldn't see her, but the old stuff was still awesome, and the weird section that may have been an exhibit about a future museum was also cool, despite how very little sense it made to us, who couldn't read the signs.

Lesson: Do not show up the the airport four hours early. It is a terrible idea, and you will probably just fall asleep on Henry V next to three middle-aged college-style Brits in matching Gryffindor-coloured striped polos. Lesson two: when making international mobile calls to Streetcars so you can get back to Harlaxton from East Midlands airport, remember to omit the 0 at the start of the number because if you don't then the country code doesn't work, and you have to ask a very nice old English man who just used the pay-phone how to do it 10 minutes before your flight boards. But despite all this and eating embarrassingly un-cultural airport food, we made it onto the plane, across the continent, into England, and back to Harlaxton at around 1am to fall asleep and start it all again.