Something About Zürich...: Berlin

Ahhhh Berlin. We LOVED Berlin. Thank goodness, because the trip got off to a very rough start. The flight arrived on time, and Tegel is the tiniest airport. You literally exit the plane to the baggage claim. Somewhere in the midst of getting the luggage and the stroller and the zillion extra things we now travel with, we forgot the baby bag. We got all the way to downtown Berlin before we realized that one of our most important pieces of luggage was missing. Fast forward through fruitless frantic pleas (in my sad rarely used German because NO ONE seemed to speak english) with people in the train station and at the airport trying to locate the missing bag... we finally decided to just go back to the airport and try to look for it ourselves. Worlds slowest bus ride later we find ourselves at the airport and finally manage to locate the bag (one super judgy lost and found lady later- "but that was HOURS ago"- clearly Germany is lacking the stellar public transportation Switzerland has, but whatever). Finally, bag in tow, we go back to downtown Berlin to get the key to the apartment we were renting for our stay. Poor Noah was a doll through all of this despite the fact that he had a terrible cold.

Luckily things got better from there. Our apartment was spacious and clean and in the most adorable neighborhood. It was sort of the Park Slope of Berlin, if you will. There were adorable shops, nice tree lined streets, and fantastic restaurants. There was also this great flea market nearby which had a mix of random vintage goods and artists selling their work. It was like a street fair in New York, but always in the same place, with Beer and way better stuff.

Park by the Flea Market

Impromptu concert

Flea Market entrance

Fresh handmade potato chips... on a stick

See it really is like Brooklyn... there were even German hipsters

A little taste of home :)

Neighborhood where we were staying

The next day we took a walking tour. The city has so much history, from WWII Nazi era to the Berlin Wall, we wanted to see make sure we got the important stuff. It was a bit of a gamble with Noah, but he ended up being an angel. Our tour guide was excellent and we really got to see a lot over the course of the day. It turns out that something like 92% of the city was destroyed in WWII, so it's hard to find original buildings- we tried! There are also a ton of great museums, but we decided we would really be pushing our luck if we did that. Instead we just spent the rest of our trip walking around and exploring the city.

Berliner Dom

Unter den Linden is a very main and very famous street in Berlin.

Memorial to the suffering of civilians during WWII

Bebelplatz
It's a bit hard to see, but under this glass is an installation art piece on the site of the Nazi book burning. It is empty bookshelves which could fit the 20,000 books burnt as they tried to eradicate all thoughts and ideas that conflicted with their own (ie. almost everything). Our tour guide called it 'brilliant'- something about the absence of presence and the presence of absence... Matt and I just saw empty bookshelves.

I honestly cannot remember what building this was... but I guess it was important?

Noah kept taking off his socks despite the fact that it was NOT warm.

Solution: socks so long he COULDN'T pull them off. We are now the proud owners of one pair of 'Berlin' socks.

Pieces of the Berlin Wall that were repainted as art

There is a brick path to show where the wall stood.

Actual original portion of the wall, still standing

Currywurst is like the national food of Berlin (maybe not officially, but it's EVERYWHERE)

Propaganda art from the Soviet Days

Loved the walk signs

Holocaust Memorial

This is the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby over the balcony. Sadly the tour guide went through all the reasons this hotel was famous... radio silence, then mentioned the Michael Jackson thing to a resounding "ahhhh" (myself included)