The REAL Germany

Okay, okay. I will explain my title in due time. Last week was my first week of classes which are all very interesting but require a bit of reading. Perfect for me because now I have something to do on those long train rides! However, I'll get into my classes more another time, but I will begin with my trip to Berlin. Some of us had a class that ended at 3:30, so we decided to try (and run) to catch the 4 o'clock train. We made it, thankfully, but if only the rest of our trip had been that easy!

Our train ride to Berlin required that we switch a few trains. We were waiting for our train and had about a twenty minute layover. Sadly, we took the wrong train. The train came a minute before ours came (and this had been  rather abandoned train station), so we all clambered aboard before we realized our mistake.
We immediately got off at the next stop to find ourselves in the random German town where we had to search for some one to speak English to figure out if a train was coming back on the single track it had there. The name of this town? Hertzogstraat something or another. We were literally in the middle of nowhere with only one person who knew a little bit of German. We found someone to help us, and they explained that the train would eventually turn back around, so we waited...again. Meanwhile, we had to figure out how on earth to get back to Berlin since we'd missed our other connections. (Here we have to thank the Bilbro's...Jeff Bilbro is our graduate assistant who we called. He looked up trains for us to take since we couldn't get WiFi anywhere!)

Thank goodness some people knew what they were doing because I just kept joking about how we had found the 'Real' Germany. Needless to say the train station we were in...it was a bit sketch.
You think our sketchiness ended there? Not for us. We made it to Berlin, but by that time it was passed midnight. Our plan had been to hail a cab, but the cab driver was trying to convince us it was only 200 meters and that it was just around the corner. He didn't drive us. We had directions, so we figured we could make our way so again, off we went. Obviously, this was my first time in Berlin, so the city at night was very different. I was a little taken aback by all the graffiti which was later explained as a big part of the culture and atmosphere in Berlin. It made me feel a little sketch, but in actuality by the time we got to our hostel (which was 1: 30am) we realized the hostel we were staying in was pretty sweet! The Wombat was actually pretty nice considering I was expecting something a bit shady. It was actually very cool.

Now, the rest of our time in Berlin was actually amazingly fun! We did one of the free walking tours the next day, and I absolutely loved it. We had a tour guide who was from Liverpool, bit of an anarchist, and she owned her own theater company. She was actually very awesome and a very engaging guide. We saw lots of things such as the Berlin Wall, the Arch, the Holocaust Memorial and lots of different buildings that represented different periods in history from World War II to the Cold War. For the most part, a lot of the sites we saw was in East Berlin which was a little sad at some points. The history was fascinating, but so much of it has been sad and dark. It's a division that can still be felt throughout the city. West Berlin is full of more business and shopping, but East Berlin seemed to hold a lot more of the city's history. It was definitely a great thing to see and experience. 

We all hung out that night which was fun and stayed another night in Berlin. Then the next day we took a little detour outside the city to Potsdam which is where the palaces of the kaisers were. It was a pretty cool city despite the wind and the cold. We ended up doing our own kind of thing because the tour was not in English but in German. A bit of a problem since the most German I can speak is "Guten tag". Haha!
After that, we headed to Cologne (by this point we're getting very savvy with the train system so no worries). We got there later, so we got a late dinner and checked into our hostel. It was still pretty nice, although the Wombat is still my personal favorite. :) We all had a more relaxing night, hanging out and playing Uno.
Then this morning, we got the opportunity to see the rest of Cologne. We went to the Dom which is the huge, beautiful, gothic cathedral that over towers everything in the city. It was amazing. I am fascinated with old architecture, so it was great to see the old, gothic cathedrals that are still scattered across Europe.

Afterward, we went to the chocolate museum! Yum!!! It also had the Lindt factory too, so I learned a lot about chocolate (and got a few free samples in addition to the chocolate I bought!). It was a great way to end our trip in Germany, so we head back to Maastricht which was nice to get back and unpack.

Overall it was a great weekend trip. We saw a lot, laughed a lot, and it makes me so grateful to get these experiences. (My feet, on the other hand, are trying to get used to all the walking!) Well, back to classes tomorrow. Time for some studying!