Berlin, Day 1 (Thursday, Sept 9)

I took the overnight train to Berlin, leaving Paris at about 8pm and arriving around 9am. After I boarded I went to the dining car and had a glass of wine before I went to sleep and ended up meeting a bunch of really cool people and talking to them for a long time before bed.

When I arrived in Berlin I had decided I wanted to walk to my hostel to see the city a bit. It was an hour and a half walk (which I was prepared for) and a bit rainy (which I was not prepared for), but I still enjoyed the walk a lot and saw some beautiful things.

I got to my hostel, and the person at the front desk told me about a free walking tour that was leaving in 20 minutes, so I ran and caught that. It was a fantastic way to start my trip, and I saw a lot of interesting sites and heard a lot of wonderful stories.

We went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is an unbelievably moving memorial. Walking through it is an emotional experience....

...as was the experience of two other memorials we saw. One was designed by a woman who had lost her father in the first world war and then lost both her son and husband in world war two. It's a statue of a woman holding her son in an empty room with stark gray walls and a large hole in the ceiling. It's very moving. The second was in memorial of the book burnings that took place in Berlin in 1933 when students (students!) burned thousands of books. It's a really cool concept for the memorial, it's a huge room with empty white bookshelves. It's actually underground and you can see it through a pane of glass in the middle of the square.

We also saw quite a few other interesting things, like a stretch of the Berlin wall, and the Berlin Cathedral....

And these two churches.....

Look similar? That's because they are. The French built a large church in Berlin, so the Germans built a church too - right across the square, nearly identical, just 2 meters taller. Haha.

It was a wonderful day. I went to dinner that evening and had an amazing pork schnitzel with fried potatoes and of course a glass of fantastic German beer :)