At the beginning of May a group of 8 of us (7 Brits and a Spaniard) went to Berlin for a long weekend. We flew from Nuremberg on the thursday- our friends said we were crazy for flying instead of getting the bus which is indeed cheaper BUT takes over 6 hours to get there. We booked our flights early for about 60euros and the journey only took an hour, so whose the winner really ??
Day 1: We stayed in a great hostel a short walk from Alexanderplatz and on our first day we did something hideously touristy, I’m almost afraid to admit it… we got tickets for a hop on/off bus. Berlin is a big city and although the metro is great, the weather was so good that we thought we would enjoy the sun on the top deck and get driven to the sights we wanted to see.
We looked around the museum quarter, the Brandenberg Gate, meandered through street markets and saw the Jewish memorial.
Day 2: Took our tour bus to the East side gallery to have a look at the wall and Kreuzberg. The real shame is that there is fencing so you can’t touch the wall or get good pictures of the graffiti. This was a really nice area along the river with pop-up beaches and bars etc.
Later that day, we split up and half of us went to the outskirts of the city to see the Olympic Park. The Olympic Park was built for the 1936 Games (when Jesse Owens won four gold medals). I was really excited to see the park and it was indeed impressive, although in some places actually quite eerie. Many parts haven’t been renovated since the 30’s so are ruins of Hitler’s monuments but you do get a sense of how immense the arenas must have been.
Day 3: Berlin zoo is world renowned so we spent our whole third day here. It’s a great facility with some wonderful animals to see. I especially remember the orangutans because one of my friends turned and said ‘I didn’t realize orangutans were real, just in movies’ she was met by stunned silence. Weather was beautiful and our french friends were quite alarmed by our need to stop for an ice cream every hour, but whatever, Brits abroad!
That evening we went to the riverbank by the Reichstag to chill and drink some beers. A great atmosphere with lots of people (obviously a guy with a guitar turned up at some point). That night we went to the club Suicide Circus as many other Adidas employees had joined us (group of about 30 in the end). A great club you should definitely check out, music was good but it was very hard to find the toilets!
Day 4: We were heading back to Nuremberg on this day but in the morning I went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum after it had come highly recommended. I’m a bit of a war history nerd so I thought this museum would be perfect. Indeed it was interesting BUT there was an unbelievable amount of reading, it wasn’t the most visual museum so by the time I got to the cool parts about how people escaped through the wall etc I was exhausted! I would still recommend it though, take the amount of reading as a challenge.
So that was it! Our long weekend in Berlin was amazing with lots of great memories. Will definitely be going back to the capital at some point!
Ciao for now,
Marlo
Life of Boyd 