We started off our Spring Break in Berlin, Germany. The only thing I could say in German was "Hallo" which simply means "hello." Learning Italian is already challenging enough, my brain couldn't take trying to take on German too.
Me, Mina, and Josie flew into Schoenfeld Airport Friday afternoon and our Berlin adventures then began! We checked into St. Christopher's Hostel which was a really neat and clean hostel. For those of you that don't know a hostel is sort of like a dorm style living place where bedrooms are normally bunk-bed style and then at the end of the hallway are communal bathrooms and showers. It sounds worse than what it seems, but if you stay at a good hostel you'll find that for the cheap price it's definitely worth it.
At St. Christophers we had the pleasure of having a 4th roommate because all rooms are mostly 4 person bunks and with their only being 3 of us we got stuck with a rando. With this being my first experience in a hostel I immediately panicked when I opened the door to see long leather platform boots with laces the entire way up and fire dragon luggage.......
Our 4th roomie ended up being a 27 year old tattoo artist from Brooklyn, New York. She had been in Amsterdam for a tattoo convention, then decided to travel to Berlin on her own for a few days before heading back to the states. She was quite the interesting character to say the least, but luckily she was nice and respectful with sharing the room. You can best believe that I ran downstairs to purchase a lock for our locker immediately that way she couldn't steal anything from us. Hey, you can never be too careful, especially when you're traveling abroad.
We had a full day of sight seeing in Berlin. We rented bikes and road to each sight seeing spot throughout the city. I was nervous at first because I hadn't biked years, but the saying is true to it's meaning, "It's like riding a bike, you never forget!"
Biking through Berlin was so much fun and such a wonderful way to tour the city! The weather was fantastic which made for an even better time. We biked to GoodTime, a Thai restaurant for lunch and had the best Thai food ever.
We also visited the Holocaust Memorial and Museum as well as Checkpoint Charlie and a few historical buildings.
Our dinners consisted of German and American food. Josie's brother is fluent in German and has traveled to Berlin before so he gave us a great recommendation to Das Edelweiss. Then the second night we went to this bar called White Trash which had pretty much all American food and live music. It was a fun time and their homemade lemonade and smirnoff was tasty!
On Sunday we headed to the train station bright and early to catch our flight to Paris. Everything was fine until we missed the first train and realized the next one didn't come for another 45 minutes! Panicking we caught the 2nd train and when we arrived at the airport stop we literally sprinted to the airport terminal. Sprinting while dragging a 40lb heavy piece of luggage is quite the workout! When we finally made it to our gate I was literally sweating. It looked like I had just finished a kickboxing class! We ended up making our flight with no other problems and I got to take a nice little nap on the plane :)
Check out the link below to see all my pictures!