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| The Group in Berlin |
Wednesday
Had to pack for the trip and print off our plane and train tickets. Then we met up with Franzi, Laurie, and Anneloes and booked our train tickets to Kiruna in the north of Sweden above the Arctic Circle. We are going the first weekend of March and it should be really fun with dog sledding, snowmobiling to the Ice Hotel and staying in a nice little hostel with a sauna.
Nick and I packed up everything into carryon sized bags for our week adventure and met Pen, Caitlin, and Lloyd at the train station around 20:30 to head to Stockholm. We checked into the same hostel I stayed at my first night in Sweden and slept from about 22:30 until only about 3:15 the next morning. Too bad we couldn’t pay by the hour for the stay!
Thursday - Berlin
Woke up ridiculously early as mentioned above to catch a 4 AM bus shuttle to the little airport about 80 minutes south of Stockholm that only Ryanair seems to use. Arrived to (snowless!) Berlin a little before 9 AM and eventually found the right train to take us to the main station closest to our hostel, Amstel House. Berlin was not what I expected, but I don’t know what I was expecting. It is a huge city over a very large area with graffiti everywhere and a mix of rebuilt nice historic buildings, modern buildings, and buildings in disrepair. We caught the metro and then walked to our hostel for 4 nights. It was in a rather quite residential area, but was very nice and really cheap! Less than $50 for 4 nights! The five of us walked around the general vicinity of the hostel and the large main city park including the Zoo. We all enjoyed the great selection of food in Berlin for very cheap prices compared to Sweden. I tried a Berlin fast food staple called currywurst. It is basically a bratwurst covered in spiced ketchup, rather tasty actually. The Zoolischer Garten Station became our home base for a lot of eating as well as the point where we could access the rest of Berlin by train or subway. The group enjoyed the hostel’s own bar with half priced beer for happy hour. Had Erdinger Weissbier Kristal, which is a clear wheat beer for only 1.45 Euro. Pen and Lloyd went to a club for a live electronic show, which went very late and Caitlin, Nick, and I returned to the hostel.
Friday
Woke up and enjoyed more of the food of Berlin by eating at a very nice corner bakery shop. Caitlin, Nick and I rallied Pen after her late night and we all head off to Brandenburg Gate to go on a free guided tour for the afternoon. The tour was great and very informative about the history of Berlin and the sights. We saw the symbol of Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial, a section of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, on of the few Nazi buildings still in use, stood above the Hitler’s Bunker, saw many nicely restored buildings and cathedrals that looked old, but were rather new due to the fact almost all of Berlin was destroyed by bombing. We ended the tour on Museum Island and then went to a bar recommended by our tour guide to have another Berlin staple Berliner Weisse flavored and brightly colored by fruit syrup. We just so happened to be in Berlin during the Berlinale International Film Festival, so we decided to go to a movie. We bought tickets for a 10 PM showing without really knowing what we would be watching. We had some dinner and amazing gelato prior to the movie at a nearby mall. The film turned out to be an Ingmar Bergman film, Sweden’s most famous director. The film was Vargtimmen or The Hour of the Wolf. It was made in the 1960s in black and white in Swedish with English subtitles. It was a very bizarre kind of psychological thriller. We headed back to the hostel after the movie rather confused by it, except for Pen who had managed to sleep through most of it, as did Lloyd for some of it.
Saturday
We found a free tour of the nearby concentration camp Sachensenhausen in the city of Oranienburg. It was a very somber and eerie place. The 5 of us got a private tour basically because we were the only people to show up for the tour that day. Our guide told us all the details of the camp that was used mainly to house political prisoners and later Soviet prisoners and relatively fewer Jews. The prisoners were put through horrific experiences and used as slave labor by the Nazis, the camp was not an extermination camp like the famous Auschwitz, yet thousands of prisoners died or were executed there. The camp was liberated by the Soviets and then very hypocritically turned into another forced labor camp in communist East Germany. We returned to Berlin and had a very nice walk along the River Spree back to the hostel. After a very intense and sad day we decided to lighten the mood by heading out for some of Berlin’s nightlife. We went to a bar/club called Café Zapata in a trendy part of eastern Berlin. The club had a rapper from New York perform, which was very good and the following DJ was one of the best I have heard. Café Zapata is adjacent to a five-story building, where a stairwell was open to all to explore the 5 floors. On the 2nd story was another little bar that was playing a lot of American oldies, particularly Mo-Town favorites. There was also another performance happening on a stage nearby. Further up the stairwell that was covered in urban art (graffiti) There were artists hanging out in their impromptu galleries showing off their work, all of this happening and bustling at about 1 AM too. Nightlife goes late in Berlin, unlike here in Sweden and we didn’t get to bed until 5:30 AM, overall a great night though.
Sunday
We all slept in after our long night out. We had lunch at a nearby Persian restaurant, which was delicious with large portions for about 6 Euro. We then made our way to one of the largest flea markets in Berlin to browse. The girls bought some stuff, while Nick and I mainly browsed and tried to stay warm on the rather frigid and overcast day.
Monday
Went to the famous East Side Gallery where a large section of the wall still remains and has been painted in sections by dozens of artists. There were some very interesting pictures. We then headed back towards the Museum Island where we had a delicious Italian lunch before going to the German History Museum to conclude our Berlin experience. Nick and I said good-bye to Pen, Caitlin, and Lloyd after an awesome 5 days in the amazing German capital and caught a midnight overnight train to Amsterdam.
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| East Side Gallery |
Tuesday - Amsterdam
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| Amsterdam Coat of Arms |
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| Red Light District |
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| Grand Place |
Nick and I woke up around 6 AM to catch a subway to the bus station where we caught a 3.5-hour bus to Brussels. We both slept most of the way as little sleep was catching up to us. Arriving in Brussels wasn’t anything like the way I thought it would be as we were in the heart of the modern finance sector of the city. Brussels wasn’t nearly as tourist friendly as Amsterdam or Berlin so we started to wander in the direction we hoped our hostel was. Amazingly our innate sense of direction was spot on and we had walked the exact direction we needed to before more or less running into the street our hostel was on. The hostel was very nice with balconies and a nice private courtyard. We then set out to explore the city. We first went by the parliament building and the royal palace separated by a gorgeous park. The weather by the way was almost perfect at around 12 degrees C! (50 F) This was a great break from the cold of Sweden and even Berlin and Amsterdam. There also was greenery and even flowers blooming. The Botanical Garden and adjacent park was very nice and strangely we saw apparently wild parrots of some sort there.
On our walk we were stopped by a Belgian police officer because I had taken a picture of the American Embassy, which I guess is a no-no. She made me delete my picture but was very nice about it. Crazy Americans, I wonder how many times a day they have to do that? We wound our way to the center of Brussels, Grand Place. It is a gorgeous central square with centuries old buildings surrounding it. We returned to the hostel and enjoyed a very cheap Stella Artois, one of the best beers I’ve had. At night we returned to Grand Place and met up with a friend of Nick’s, Kylie, who is studying abroad in Brussels. She led us around and took us to a popular restaurant where we had great Belgian seafood, mussels and crayfish, as our last dinner of the trip. We then searched for the famous symbol of Brussels, manneken pis, which is a fountain of a small boy peeing. Apparently the story is there was a large fire in the city and the little boy helped start putting it out by peeing on it. Strange I know, but the figure was in every souvenir shop we went to. We then went to an Irish pub where Kylie’s friends were watching the Arsenal – Barcelona match. We saw the last 15 minutes to see Arsenal upset Barcelona, much to the delight of the many English spectators at the bar. We called it a night after that and headed back to the hostel.
Thursday
We had to wake up around 6 AM again to catch a train and then a bus to the airport. We got back to Stockholm around 13:00 and grudgingly returned to expensive food by having McDonalds at the train station for twice the price it would be in the US or Germany. We caught the train back to Uppsala and finally made it back to the apartment around 15:30. I relaxed for the rest of the day and did some much-needed laundry.
Overall it was a great trip over 8 days and 3 new countries for which I have added a national flag from each to my growing collection. I can’t wait for more travelling in Europe and our trip to Lapland in early March!
Sam Taylor
On a sad note I found that my friend from high school and teammate on knowledge bowl Sam Taylor died in a tragic accident when the boat she was on in Vietnam sank. She was a fun and bubbly person and had just recently graduated from CU. She was taken from us too soon and I know she will be reminiscing with Tyler and Andy about our knowledge bowl glory days now. Sam you will be sorely missed.
Friday
Caught up on some much needed sleep before walking around Uppsala running some errands with Nick. We wondered through parts of Uppsala we hadn't be too and found a nice park where ice sculptures were on display for the ice festival going on this week. We came back just in time for a cold snap as it is around -12 C (10 F) or worse. I think that Uppsala had been unseasonably warm my first month here so I was a little spoiled with the 0 C temperatures. Brussels weather got my excited for spring, but we are probably at least one month away from that, maybe two months. We braved the cold and had a night out at Varmlands Nation for their club.
Wow - what a trip! Glad cosmo Berlin was more an attraction than sex and drugs!
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