Berlin was fabulous. Berlin was beautiful. Berlin was
saukalt!
As a special Christmas treat, Josh and I took to the rails and traveled north for a few nights last week. It had snowed about a foot the day and night before our trip and the scenery from the train ("mountains", trees, German villages, hilltop castles) was gorgeous! Snow is pretty, but snow is basically just fluffy ice
and Berlin was frigid the entire time we were there. Fortunately it was the first trip to Berlin for both of us and there were many museums (aka sanctuaries from the cold) to explore. But trust me, we still spent plenty of time out in the elements as you will see from the ridiculous amount of pictures that I am posting.
Speaking of, let's get most of those out of the way...
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| Josh on an antiquated Berlin U-bahn train. I for real saw a door fly open during transit. Not cool, train, not cool. |
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| A festive Bradenburg Tor |
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| Friedrichstraße |
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| Unter den Linden |
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| My favorite Christmas decorations yet! Very large cloth and wood frame lanterns hanging from trees lighting a neighborhood near our hotel. |
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| TV tower in Alexanderplatz |
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| Yeah, those are ice chunks... |
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| Part of the reconstructed Pergamon temple at the Pergamon Museum |
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| Part of a reconstructed market gate at the Pergamon Museum |
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| Detail of the Ishtar Gate at the Pergamon Museum |
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| Our lunch stop had a fancy atmosphere. It was kind of like a Mexican tiki bar? |
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| Cha-a-a, it was cold. But as we all know by now, I love me some snow. |
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| I dunno, some art gallery? I thought it was pretty. |
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| On our way to the Neues Museum |
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| I'm not sure what I was expecting from the "world's largest granite bowl" in the Lustgarten (Pleasure Garden), but reading about it was more exciting than seeing it... |
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| Uhhh...inside at the Neues or Altes Museum - cannot remember |
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| Berliner Dom with the tv tower in the background |
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| On our way to to dinner along the Ku'damm |
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| Joshy the snowman |
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| A portion of the Berlin Wall |
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| Berlin Wall |
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| A Christmasy Checkpoint Charlie | | |
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Highlights of the trip:
- The Pergamon Museum
-The interactive, independently ran DDR museum gives you a little insight to what everyday life was like in the German Democratic Republic.
- Gemäldegalerie
- The bar near our hotel that served proper cocktails
- Machine Guns, everywhere! This is not so much a "highlight" as it is something of note. I did not care for the machined gunned guy standing in the middle of a side street 30 feet away from an unattended large duffel bag, also in the street, who did not appear to have anything on him that would identify to the casual observer that it was okay for him to be armed, at night, near the Reichstag.
We packed our days full, but there still is so much more Berlin to see. I hope we make it back.
Oh, and I was under the impression that Berlin is known for their jelly donuts (
the Berliner, duh!), well I did not chance upon any of these delightful sounding num-nums but one particular American chain was even more prevalent than Starbucks in the tourist areas. I probably saw at least 10 different shops.
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| Do these still even exist in Oregon? (Photo inspired by and taken for Ms. McGibbon) |
