Berlin: rebellious and grunge galore

Mallory and I arrived in Berlin around 9am and made it to the hostel without any hitches. Matt and Kyle were in the same room as us and that was really convenient! We dropped off our stuff, ate lunch, and made it to the 1:15 walking tour. We began at the Brandenburg Gate, walked through the Holocaust memorial, saw Checkpoint Charlie (which isn’t even the real checkpoint :|), walked by the Berlin cathedral, and so many other places I can’t remember them all!

After the walking tour, we walked for a solid 40 minutes trying to find the beer fest that was going on in Berlin. There were booths selling beer from various parts of Germany and all over the world. We bought a beer and people watched. There were groups of guys celebrating bachelor parties, many many Australians, Germans, and other foreigners. It was mostly an older (and taller) crowd - Mallory and I were probably the youngest age category. We walked further down the street picking up some home-made potato chips along the way. On our walking tour, the guide mentioned cherry beer, beer with flavored syrup. We found a booth selling it and tried some. It was good! You’d think it’d be icky sweet or cough medicine tasting but no! It had the cherry flavor of a cherry Coke, maybe a little less sweet, but was bright red. Mallory and I walked the length of the festival and headed back to the hostel to see if the guys wanted to grab dinner.

We got back and they were getting ready to go to the beer fest, Mallory and I skipped out and found a restaurant around the hostel.

Our second day in Berlin began with an alternative walking tour of Berlin, my first paid walking tour! And it was so worth it.

Berlin is a young city, only a few years older than me. It’s a grunge and rebellious city: graffiti and street art are EVERYWHERE; everyone you pass on the street has at least one tattoo, one piercing, and hair that’s either not their natural color or is in dreadlocks. Broken glass bottles are everywhere, glistening in the sun. Cigarette butts polka dot the pathways, and the ground is often times sticky. Walking around the city, it’s normal to be hit with the stench of urine. We saw a girl flat out pee in the metro and judging by the smell of the area, that’s a totally normal thing to do.

On the alternative tour, we went to more residential areas of Berlin as well as some popular tourist places (we ended at the East Side Gallery, but more on that later). We went into side streets and areas that I never would have found (or gone into) by myself. Graffiti is spray paint and graffiti group tags whereas street art is a design made by an artist that is printed and pasted with flour and water around the city. The talent is incredible! One artist tells a story of this little girl Lucy and all the ways she tries to kill her cat. It’s kinda mean but fun to look for. I found one piece with a dead cat and it says “Lucy did it” underneath.

We saw a mural of Anne Frank, an astronaut painted on the whole side of a building, a bust composed of other bodies, and so many more. We ended the tour at the East Side Gallery. The East Side Gallery is the remaining 1.5km of the Berlin Wall. The government invited 120 artists from all over to paint murals on it. It’s incredible to see and definitely my favorite thing in Berlin. I’ll upload pictures of it as soon as I get home, they’re powerful. Some of the paintings are fun, others are serious, but they all have a message.

Mallory and I went to a flea market after the tour and headed later to the hostel. We met up with Matt and Kyle and headed to the beer fest for dinner and more beer tasting! We went to the hostel to meet up with a couple guys, Whitaker and Toby, we met at the hostel to go out that night. They’re friends and from Seattle! We all went to one club/bar (I don’t really know what it is) called Watergate, but were turned down because we aren’t 21. Whitaker and Toby went back in line and got in. Matt, Kyle, Mallory, and I tried for another placed called Suicide Circus. We hadn’t said anything but immediately upon seeing us the bouncer shook his head no. We tried for one more place and were rejected again so Mallory and I went back to the hostel defeated. Matt and Kyle still had hope, but were turned down at the rest of the clubs too.

The next morning, the 4th, Mallory and I checked out Spreepark. Spreepark is classified as an abandoned amusement park. I phrased the sentence like that because you can take a tour of the abandoned grounds so in a way it’s not really abandoned. The pages about it online mentioned sneaking in and avoiding security. There are certain areas you can see without the tour but not too much. The tour was €15 and we really didn’t want to pay that, we only did the €3 tram ride. After the ride we took some silly photos and crossed the tape into the forbidden areas. We saw some things and took pictures before security found us, about 5 minutes after crossing the tape. The German woman (on a bike, not too scary) said in German this is private and we were like, uh can you speak English? And she said it again, and said the pictures on my camera had to be deleted and she had to watch me do it. This is when I start panicking. No way was I going to delete my pictures! Mallory said we paid for a tour (which we did, just not *the* tour). German bike patrol asked for a receipt. Mallory said we didn’t have one (also true). Then the group of French guys bike patrol lady had previously told off ran past her and she got distracted. Thank god! She pedaled away after them yelling “I WILL CALL THE POLICE!” and Mallory and I turned to walk away. Once my back was turned to her, I removed my memory card from my camera and put it in my bra cup. I didn’t know if she would come back and check my pockets and whatnot. Well she did come back and asked to see my camera and I told her it has no memory card and showed her the screen saying NO PICTURES. She wasn’t too satisfied but was proved wrong with the camera. What could she do? And pedaled away once again after the French. I waited until we were well out of her view to put the card back in.

We left the park laughing at our truth trickery ways and headed to the Jewish Museum. It is seriously anything and everything you ever could have wanted to know about the history of Jews. Some of it was cool, some I already knew, and there were some Holocaust stories and confiscated items on display. It’s so easy to get lost in there, it’s huge and the path that goes through the exhibits is winding.

We called it a day and grabbed dinner. The next day would be an early morning to make our 7am flight to Amsterdam. We woke up at 3, left the hostel by 3:30 and all without a problem!