Berlin and Prague

Oh man, this is gonna be a long post.  Here goes an hour of typing:

Our trip started early Saturday morning, I had to be at the train station at 8am to catch a 5 hour train to Berlin.  Fortunatly, I caught some sleep on the train so I could fully enjoy the bus tour we took when we got there.  We arrived at around 1 then went on a bus tour of the whole city for avout 4 hours visiting all the main sites.  As you can tell by my album, I got a lot of pictures on this trip and a majority of them were from this first day.  After the tour we got dropped off at our hotel and we had a couple hours to relax before going to get pizza at a really cool restaurant.  On the menu were a couple pizzas with horse meat so, being the adventurous kid I am, decided to try it.  Overall it was pretty good but didn't have much flavor, just generic meat but I'm definitely glad I tried it.  One of the girls on our trip is obsessed with horses so I tried to keep it a seceret that I was ordering it but, as news is difficult to limit, she found out and overracted to say the least.  After dinner some of us were too tired to go out and wanted to save our energy for the next day because it was going to be another full day so we went back and slept.

On Sunday we left the hotel at 7:50am and got a tour of a concentration camp until 1:30.  Our tour guide knew a ton about the camp and the era in general which was awesome.  It was strange to walk in the same camp on the same ground that prisoners had.  Afterwards we got lunch and went for a tour of the parliament building which was quite cool.  That ended around 6 which ended the planned events for the day so we all went back.  Unfortunately, a combination of imperfect directions and our lack of paying full attention lead to us taking the correct bus but in the wrong direction.  After about 40 minutes of bussing around we finally ended up in front of our hotel.  My roommates and I went out to get dinner at a Vietnamese place right next door which was delicious.  At around 9:30 we walked over to an American bar to watch the superbowl (which didn't start until 12:30) and have some drinks.  After half time most of us were done, wasn't invested in either team, so we walked back and passed out at 3:30 only to wake up again at 8:30 the next day.

Monday we left at 9:30 and went to an old Stasi prison from when Germany was split into East and West.  It's inmates were political prisoners or people who tried to escape from East Germany.  Our tour guide was again not only knowledgeable in the subject matter but very fun to listen to.  He was by far the best tour guide we had on the entire trip, in my opinion, because of the way he talked.  He put inflections and pauses in just the right spots to keep our attention.  After the tour we went to the Pergamon museum which was breathtaking.  Unfortunately the first time I added comments to all the pictures the site decided it would crash on me so I'll have to go back a little later to add that in.  Anyway, we got to see the Ishtar gates, the Pergamon from ancient Greece and pieces of the frieze that ran all around it and a Roman gate that was the entrance to the market place.  If anyone gets a chance to visit Berlin and only has time to visit a couple places, the Pergamon has to be one of them.  When we were done in the Pergamon we rushed to get a quick lunch before going to the Jewish museum which showcases German Jewish history for the past couple thousand years.  It was an architectural tour which was quite cool, the building was very interesting and even though the guide struggled immensly with English he gave a very good tour.  At around 5 when we were done with all our tours everyone was beyond exhausted so we went to an Italian place for dinner then hit the hay.

Tuesday was "My Berlin Day" which meant we had picked a topic and would spend the day getting tours and roaming the city learning all we could about it.  I chose multiculturalism and got up early to get breifed on where were to go and the likes.  We ended up in Kreuzberg, a district of Berlin, and got a tour by a lady who had lived there her whole life, she was about 30.  After getting an introduction to the types of people living in Berlin and where and why they came, we walked around and got to see the layout of the area.  In this district there is almost no police presence, most law enforcement is done by the community itself which I thought was very cool.  For example, the subway station in Kreuzberg is known as the area of Berlin where you go if you want to buy or sell drugs so a group of mothers get together to go to the station at night and clean it up so kids don't see the needles when they go to school in the morning.  At midday we went to a Mosque to witness the midday prayer and learn a little about Islam.  That was the conclusion of our tour but we still had 5 hours before we had to go back so we roamed around visiting shops and seeing the city more.  When we got back to the hotel we made our presentation for the rest off the group and gave it.  We were supposed to put together a presentation of some kind telling the other students about what we did during the day.  It wasn't a graded assignment, more so that all of us could experience all the four different options of the day in some reguard.  Since this was our last night in Berlin most of us went out to enjoy a night on the town but, unfortunately, it failed because we were following the lead of someone who claimed to know the city but turned out to just have us walking around finding nothing.  Finally at 2 I got fed up with his lack of knowledge and decided to call it a night.

Wednesday morning we had to get up early again (6:45) to catch a train for a 4 hour journey to Prague.  When we got there we went straight to the hotel to drop off our bags then got a "tour" of the city by a local who is a friend of one of the directors.  At around 3 the tour was over and we got dinner on our own before going back to the hotel to get ready for the opera.  My friends and I went to a British pub and I got a shepard's pie which was delicious.  At 6:30 we all left for the opera which, much to my surprise, turned out to be a very cool experience.  The first act was painful (literally, the female role kept singing too loud and high pitched and it hurt my ears) but the second and third were very good.  The opera was called La Traviata which is apparently a famous one.  Anyway, back to the important stuff, the building itself was beautiful.  Unfortunately I was only able to get one photo because I checked my jacket and left my camera in the pocket but I'll try to download some other's pictures of the building.

Thursday was our last day in Prague and it started at 8:45 where we met up with our guide from the day before to get a more official tour of the city.  It is a very cool city that was much smaller than I thought it would be.  At around noon we took a break in a coffee shop to get hot chocolate, which was amazing, before continuing on to the castle where the president of the Czech Republic lives.  At around 3 we were again done for the day so we all went to get lunch at a street vendor and Mike and I went souvineer shopping (got something for you Mom).  For better or worse I don't know any Czech so I didn't understand that the sausage I ordered was blood sausage until afterwards when one of my friends told me.  That was the one food I was planning on avoiding because the concept was too gross but it was actually pretty good.  I don't intend to repeat the experience but I'm glad it happened.  After a quick nap we all went out for our goodbye dinner at a very nice restaurant and I got duck and dumplings which was a-mazing.  After dinner we all went back and proceeded to enjoy the last night away from Bonn.  Unfortunately, much like the last night in Berlin, a couple people wanted to find a famous club while most of us wanted to go to the one right down the street but, since no one wanted to make others unhappy, we all ended up roaming around and found nothing.  All in all, I had a good night with my friends so I'm not worried about it.

Friday was a very low key day, all of us were exhausted and ready to be back.  Some, instead of coming back to Bonn, went on to visit Budapest, but that would have been too much for me and several of the others.  After a quick flight and a cab ride I was back in my room in Bonn and mentally released all my thoughts which felt wonderful.

If you made it to the bottom of this article, bravo.  I probably wouldn't have =)

I'll write the article about what I did in Brussels with my host dad and sister in a few days once people have read through this one.  Don't want to flood you guys with too much information!