We gonna party like it's your birthday

Now that I think about it, Berlin was probably one of my favorite places I visited on my whirl-wind tour of Europe.  Arriving in Germany felt very strange, but by the end of my stay in Berlin a lot of my skepticisms and stigmas of Germany had disappeared.  Germany is extremely apologetic of its Nazi and Berlin is a tribute to this with many Holocaust memorials and the overall feeling of moving forward past its communist and Nazi history.

Anyway, now to what I actually did in Berlin.  Berlin is SO cool.  Because of all the bombings in went through during WWII, it is a completely new and modern city and the buildings are AWESOME (especially the main train station, SO COOL).  We took a train to Berlin from Prague which was a great experience because we hand an entire compartment (yes, it's like Harry Potter and there are compartments) and stretched out to take a lovely nap.  We spent our first day walking around the city and just getting the vibe of Berlin.  We went to a Shul that was destroyed during WWII, which actually had a really interesting exhibit about Jews in Germany pre-Nazi time and stopped at Berlin's Museum Island (self-explanatory what it is).  We saw the Reichstag (molto bello!).  What's cool about the Reichstag is you can see through the ceiling of the main hall where Berlin's parliament meets because the idea is government should be open and transparent to the people.  Unfortunately you needed a reservation and we didn't get to go in.  So instead we spent some time hanging out in the sun on the gorgeous open field in front of it, during which Miriam wrapped her scarf around her head to keep her from blowing all over the place, and looked like a married Orthodox woman (mazel tov!)  Afterwards, we headed to the East Side Gallery, which is a giant section of the Berlin Wall that is covered in all different paintings representing peace, freedom, and tolerance.

East Side Gallery

Lookin fine

Reichstag

That night, Miriam and I went on a pub crawl to celebrate my 21st birthday (Ah.  Weird.  I'm old), despite the fact we were about to fall over from exhaustion.  We started at this awesome bar that was outside and sort of looked like an abandoned junk yard but swap out the junk for Christmas lights and cool sculptures.  The pub crawl was lots of fun, and we met some Estonian and Israeli (yay, I missed Israelis) guys and then once it hit midnight and I took my first "legal" shot, we left and went to bed, because we are lame.  Yay for turning 21!

We spent the day of my birthday on the Free New Europe tour of Berlin (seriously, they should be me for all the good things I'm saying about them) and it was awesome!!! We saw the Jewish Holocaust monument, which was interesting and consisted of a lot of large stone blocks...

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

We also saw a lot of war buildings, including the old Nazi airforce headquarters.  While leaning against this building listening to my tour guide tell us about it, I realized that simply by the act of me leaning against the building Hitler lost and would do some not so nice things upon seeing me do this.  We also stood on the ground over where Hitler killed himself.  Essentially I spent my birthday learning about Nazis and Communism, which was really interesting despite the depressing-ness factor.  After the tour we went to the Topography of Terror museum, which explains the inner workings of the Nazi party, and is actually really cool and really well done.  We finished off the day with a lovely birthday dinner, and then preceded to pass out because we were EXHAUSTED and to wake up early for our flight back to Italy!  

It was awesome traveling throughout Europe for spring break, but I was also so happy to return to Florence, mainly because I missed Italian food, but also I could not have been more exhausted after seeing 4 incredible cities in 10 days.  Lesson learned: traveling=tiring.  

Ciao ciao!