This past weekend I traveled to Berlin, Germany. Everyone in the house was excited for our first travel weekend, but we had to stay within Germany since our visas were still being processed and we had to hand in our passports for that. Half the students in the house ended up going to Berlin and we all met up at the Brandenburg Gate. (This gate is where Ronald Reagan gave a speech in 1987, with the famous line, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear this wall down!" It was one of the main gates between East and West Germany.) It turned out to be a pretty crazy weekend for multiple reasons: 1) 3/4 of the trains in Berlin were taken out of service since it was discovered that the inspections of the trains' brakes were not being done properly, so basically a huge part of the S-Bahn wasn't available and it messed up a lot of our travel within the city. 2) The Berlin Marathon was this weekend (35,000 runners, 26 miles, and 1 million spectators) so that made it really crowded. A girl from our group, Emily, actually ran in the marathon and she placed 1st in her age group and 128th overall...she's pretty amazing! 3) The hostel we stayed at was horrible because it was freezing at night :( I definitely learned the importance of packing warm clothes. and 4) We went out Friday night. The whole group. That's all I'm saying about that. :)
On Saturday, we went sightseeing. We saw Checkpoint Charlie, The Holocaust Memorial, The Reichstag, and what is left of the Berlin Wall. There's actually a picture in our house of the 1989-90 Heidelberg Class standing on the Berlin Wall and they got to be there when the wall was torn down. It's pretty special that they got to witness such a historical moment. Our hostel ended up being a long way away from the historical parts of Berlin, so we walked everywhere! By Sunday we were all worn out, but overall I had a really great time in Berlin!
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