Day 29: Berlin

Since P also happens to be in Berlin and our travel plans cross one day, we met in the morning at Potsdamer Platz for ice cream. It was after we got there that he told us the place was great for huge sundaes with fruit. (We'd just eaten a hearty breakfast at the hostel not too long ago.) We still got something, of course. He ordered a strawberry yogurt ice cream and we ordered a banana choco crepe, sharing both together. We actually ended up with two scoops of ice cream on the crepe instead of one because they messed up and gave us a scoop of vanilla instead of choco ice cream like it said it came with. After mentioning it to the server, she brought over a scoop of choco as well ^-^

We didn't know it before but it turns out P had lived for a number of years in Berlin! He said since his family lived in West Berlin, not much changed for them lifestyle-wise when the wall came down, except they were now able to visit family who lived in the East. It was interesting. It was also a reminder that the wall came down not all that long ago, actually during our lifetime.

After ice cream with P, we walked around Potsdamer Platz for a bit and went up to a 'panorama' viewpoint. Unfortunately, only two of the four sides were viewable; the other half was closed off due to construction >_< We saw another locking/popping/breaking crew. This one actually had two females! One of the guys performed the best locking I've seen out of all the crews we've bumped into during our travels.


You can get your passport stamped with East Berlin as a souvenir if you want! We're not sure why anyone would stamp their actual passport; we could only imagine it causing unnecessary headaches at immigration of various countries.

Jewish Museum. A very well-done museum that tells about life as a Jew from early (middle ages?) to present time. Some parts of the museum were quite high-tech, for example, digital images of some really old books. The physical book was on display and you could "flip" through the digitized one. They also had question kiosks all over that asked various questions and you could see how other people voted. A few of the results surprised me. In response to "should all children born in Germany be granted German citizenship", only 1/3 said yes. This was probably surprising for me because it's something I take for granted in the U.S. -- being born in the States means you're a citizen. Also, in response to "do you think your friends have prejudices against Jews", 60% said yes. Once again, a surprise because of my home environment. If, however, the question was about blacks rather than Jews, I would be less surprised. Prejudices are different in different countries. That's an obvious statement, but I don't consciously think about it.

I also really liked the "Garden of Exile" exhibit at the museum. It was outside, a bunch of pillars in ground that was slanted. Walking through the pillars made for an entirely disorienting experience! It was supposed to symbolize the disorienting feeling experienced by those who were forced to escape from Germany and adjust to living in a new foreign country.

We hung out until early evening (ate currywurst!) and then returned to the hostel to eat dinner and rest. Since our flight out to Istanbul is at 3:05am (!), we'll be leaving the hostel a little after midnight. It's a long night.

I'm sure we'll be back to Berlin. The only thing is -- it may have entirely changed by the time we come back! There were construction cranes all over the place and it's a city that's constantly remaking itself. It's hard to imagine it's only the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall.