Berlin

Since we had a 11 day trip, we wanted to spend the weekend in a nearby country and see a new place. Since we were already so close to my college friend Bomie, it just made since to go visit her in Berlin! We got in late but the next day we walked through a few museums with some cool Ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian artifacts.

The golden hat was one of the main things to see in the museum. We were bummed we couldn’t find a miniature version for our souvenir collection. 😉 After the museums we walked around and explore the city.

We ate dinner with Bomie that evening and got some ice cream. It was so much fun catching up with her. We had so much fun suffering the late nights in the BFA and exploring New York together. Four years is too long!

We walked to the Berlin wall and read the different plaques they had around the area.

Potsdam

We decided to buy a cheap walking tour to a nearby town Potsdam after we felt like we saw most of Berlin the day before. We are so glad we did this, it was such a pretty town with so many cool buildings and palaces!

We also got to see the actual ‘Bridge of Spies’ like in the Tom Hanks movie. Pretty cool, we weren’t expecting that so it was a fun surprise.

Funniest story of the trip: As we started walking through a nice park by the lake to get to a few of the palaces, the tour guide turned around to the 30 of us and said something to the likes of , “Just so you are aware, we will be walking through a sun-bathing park so most people will be nude. This is a completely normal German thing.” Ryan and I were so surprised and sure enough, we saw lots of naked men and women just lounging on blankets and walking around in the nude. Because we were right next to a lake, technically we can check off ‘visit a nude beach’ off our bucket list!

The Sanssouci Palace was my favorite. The king Frederick the Great that built this had a very interesting story, one that would be super interesting as a movie. All about bad family relationships, forbidden lovers, and deceit. Sounds like every other movie to me! He built this summer palace to get away and relax, Sanssouci literally translates to “without worries”.

After we got back to Berlin, we took a short walk from our hotel to the Holocaust Memorial. It was too late to see the basement museum but we just walked around the memorial. Ryan didn’t get it, but I really liked all the symbolism that I caught from the memorial. In Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives is almost completely filled with tombs and the hill looks very similar to this. However, these stones are dark and cold, sharp and unmarked. It was definitely a humbling experience to walk through.

Of course during our whole Berlin trip, we didn’t get good pictures of us in front of the two most iconic buildings. The Berlin Cathedral (although we ate lunch literally right next door so that was pretty cool) and the Brandenburg Gate. We walked by at night which is not great selfie time but it was fun seeing all the people around and everything lit up!