BERLIN

Written the first week in March:
This past weekend has been one of the craziest ones thus far.
Kelly, Darren, Andrew, Alex & took a cab to the Euroline bus stop around 11pm on Thursday night. After checking in and loading the bus not long after 11:30pm, we were off and on our way to Berlin! The bus ride was long, and somewhat treacherous, however, nine ish hours later we arrived at "ZOB"- the Berlin bus station. A few minutes walking led us to the Kaiserdam subway stop, where we loaded the metro to take us to Rosa-Luxenburg-Platz where we would find our hostel just 200 yards away. After dropping our stuff in the luggage room of The Wombat hostel, the five of us left with Matty, a walking tour guide, who took us to the area where the walking tours depart from. After a magnificent mocha and sandwich from Starbucks (yeah, we were desperately hungry), we took off on our walking tour with our guide, Summer. We explored the city for the next 3 1/2 hours and saw sights and heard historical blurbs and stories.
After this, we headed back to the hostel for a much needed nap, and finally made our way down the the restaurant next door for dinner. Then we were off to a pub crawl! and we had to run around to find it and then literally sprint to the bar to make it for the first free beer. haha four bars, great company, and a few Australian acquaintances later, I struggled for Andy and his friends (coming from studying in Vienna) to find the bar- which was a bitch because in the middle of trying to figure out where we were, both of our phones ran out of minutes, without 10 mins of each other, and thus, impossible for us to contact one another. BUST! anyway, the rest of the night was a lot of fun and by the time we made it back to bed it was one of the best sleeps of my life!
The next morning Kelly & I got up to take advantage of the bfast at the restaurant next door to the hostel, for 3.50 euro- yum! After rounding up the boys and getting ready, and finally meeting up with Andy & co. to discuss plans for meeting up later, we headed out to the Museum Isle. After a bunch of amazing pictures later, we also went to the government building where there is this dome you can venture up (kinda like the Arc de Triumph or Effiel Tower) and check out the view of the city. It was beautiful! Then we had dinner at the most spectacular falafel place called “Da Da Falafel.” It was unrealllllll. I am not doing Berlin much justice here, but it was fabulous. This night we met up with Andy & co. at the hostel bar around 10 pm, and headed out for Panorama around 1am…yeah, things get started late. Anyway, to make a long story short we waited in line from like 4:30am – 5:15 am just to get rejected at the door for being American. Bust.
The next morning was a rough one, as we didn’t sleep until 7am and had to check out by 10am, but the crew ventured to an outdoor market that was really cool. I really love walking around markets and looking at all the random shit people are trying to sell. Ha!
Then we tried to go to this place, apparently the largest department store in all of continental Europe, but it was Sunday, and therefore, closed- so we had lunch at this little café before heading back to Wombats to get our things and head to the bus.

Funny though how we thought we had all the time in the world, and realized that the bus was scheduled to leave in 20 minutes- when we were still on the train. AH! We all got really flustered, but decided as long as the train didn’t break down or something we’d be fine. 17 seconds after we agreed on this, the train stopped and the lights went out. What seemed like forever and was probably only 40 seconds, the train started moving (with the lights still out) and eventually got us to the right stop 7 minutes pre bus departure. We sprinted to the bus and were the last ones to board- somehow though we still all got our own seats- success!