So. Many. Stairs.
-----------
My roommates and I woke up early this morning and went straight to the Reichstag. The Reichstag is the building where they housed the Reischstag Parliment of the German Empire a bit before and after the Nazi Regime. They fully refurbished the Reichstag after the reunification of Germany in 1990 and the building is now used by today's German parlimant. Anyways, enough history.
To the right is a picture of my roommates and I at the Riechstag . The cool thing about Berlin is that even though it is huge, everything is reletively close by. It isn't built on a grid system like New York City, it is more like a big circle with an incredibly messy and unorganized train system. None the less, somehow it works and everyone manages to get around.
Next we walked over to The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Such a blunt name, yet appropriate all the while. The memorial consists of 2,711 concrete slabs, each being a different size and shape.
The feeling you get when walking down the long isles of the memorial is a little uneasy. The memorial is pretty intense and the architechure is unique and well thought out for what it represents. What lightened the mood was seeing families walk through the memorial playing hide and seek. It was a neat experience to feel instant solitude when standing in the middle of the memorial, surrounded by thousands of concrete slabes towering over you. In contrast, you hear children playing hide and seek, laughing in the background when you turn a corner through this stone maze. Props to that architech!
After that bomb that we dropped on ourselves we decided to do something fun. If you know me, then you know that fun must involve something with coffee, buffalo chicken or a budlight lime. Berlin only offers one of those things so we trailed our way straight to Starbucks, ironically located beside The Kenney Museum. After I had my daily dose of perfection, we headed to The Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz.
Potsdamer Platz is a really modern and cool area to be in. The Sony Center is like a gigantic outdoor mall covered by a dome that lights up different colors in the night! There is also an English movie theatre in there, which is extremely exciting for me. We walked around, checked out some cafes, the 2012 VW Beetle display and the Boulevard of Stars (just like a 100m long Hollywood. There is also the ''Filmhaus'' inside which I am also really excited about.It is a museum full of televsion, filming equipment from the past century,the history that goes along with it all and what films/shows were produced with them. It's on my to-do list.
On to the rest of the day....more importantly...the BEST part!!
I went to the Olympic Stadium. Wait wait wait...there is more. I actually swam in the Olympic Stadium pool as well! Yes, the one where the 1936 Olympic games took place. The pool was huge and had a nice area to lay out. The sun finally decided to grace us with its presence today so taking a dip in the Olympic pool followed by a nap in the sun next to it was nothing less than perfect (especially for €2.50).
Being in Berlin is different than being anywhere else (such a vague point, I know) but the difference is, is that where ever I may be standing at that point, I am always thinking of the history, or wondering what took place exactly where I am standing or what it looked like 60 years ago. It's like living in a really artsy, liberal history book. Weird to say that about Germany, but more so amazing.
At Charlottenburg Palace gardens, holding up a tree of course.
The top floor of the building that I live in, also known as my apartment...8 flights of stairs :)
No comments:
Post a Comment