Berlin

Howdy!
This weekend a few friends and I went to Berlin. We took an overnight train. I feel like I'm a connoisseur of trains. The Deutsch-Bahn trains are nicer and newer than, say, TrainItalia. It's cool to spend the night on a train instead of in a hostel, but harder to sleep, and you get exhausted early the next day. But I felt safe on this train, which was good. So we just got up in the morning and started exploring Berlin. We went to a few museums, like the Pergamon, which has this ancient temple stairs and relief of these mythic gods from the ancient city of Pergamon. It's really cool because you expect to walk into the museum and look at statues and jars or whatever, but here you walk into a huge room with a staircase and columns and you are surrounded by the reliefs from this place. It was amazing. They also have these ancient city gates from Milets and Ishtar, and you walk through them, which is cool.

We saw parts of the Berlin Wall, erected during the Cold War around West Berlin by the Soviets to control the border so people could not leave communist East Berlin through the island of democracy West Berlin. They also cut off supplies to West Berlin, which was why there were Berlin airdrops of food and supplies. I have to remind myself that this oppression happened in my lifetime.

I've decided that staying in hostels are a great way to meet other young English-speaking travellers. I've had good experiences in most of the hostels I've stayed at. I roomed with an Aussie and Kiwi in Berlin, and the Kiwi is coming to Salzburg soon so I hope to show her around the city!

We went to Schlotzsky's in Berlin and I got ice in my coke and free refills- it was amazing!

This is Unter der Linden, or Under the Linden Street, because it is lined with Linden trees. Supposedly Hitler had them cut down and that's why they lost the war, but they have been replanted.
This is the Brandenburger Tor, and the end of Unter der Linden. When you walk through it there is a long street to this statue of Nike, and there is a Tiergarten, like Central Park, around it.

Here I am at the German Parliament building. It has a glass dome on top that you can walk around. I liked the large open field in front of the building, where people were flying kites and walking around.

I've become much more comfortable living in Salzburg because I know how things work for daily things, like what to do when I go to the grocery store, etc. But I still feel like there is a cultural gap, like when I get on the bus I hope noone talks to me because I won't be able to understand them. But the other night there was a kind lady who sat next to me and said something to me, and I just smiled. There were a few kids playing and she said something about them to me, but she could tell from my expression I didn't understand, so she tried to explain in English and then she wished me a wonderful Christmas as she was leaving. She made an impression on me for her willingness to interact with a stranger and to break the gap between us.

Well, hope everyone's finals go well. I'll be home soon!
Liz