Guten Tag. That means hello in German. Impressed? Thought so. We're just back from another long weekend away. We started in Berlin and left from Paris. I should be using my pictures to help me write but I'm at work pretending to be a good intern so that will have to wait. Friday morning we woke up at the lovely hour of 3 am so get our little butts to Gatwick. The Gatwick Express zoomed along and we made it in perfect timing for our 6:50 flight to Berlin. We made our way to our hostel which, although offering a confusing and deceptive lighting system, was really nice.
We headed out into the large dust lot which was our local area and found our way through the German rail system to get lunch and take a boat tour. Unfortunately, it was pretty chilly but it was sunny. The boat tour was good but I didn't learn much about what I was seeing. After that, we headed back for a nap and got ready to go to dinner. Megan navigated the underground like a champ and got us to Orangesomethingorother. It was a super-cool area and we found a great Thai place. After that, we hung out at a couple of places and headed over to Watergate. SO COOL. This club, which is actually really hard to get into, was right on the river and had amazing views. Once we made a pitstop for schwarma (a miracle?) we were in bed around 5 am.
Day two we got ourselves to the train and headed to some other stop I can't pronounce to get a free walking tour. It was three and a half hours and it was so great. Our tour guide, Ben, was really fun, really nice, and knew everything about Berlin. It's such an interesting city. It's still really underpopulated and there's so many remnants from the war. It's recent history compared to everything else we've been learning about. We did a bit more walking around and headed back to our hostel before we boarded the night train.
We boarded the train two minutes before it left. Even though we had booked an all female car, there was one guy already with his bag on one of the beds in our room. And when I say room, I mean closet. And when I say closet, I mean crawlspace. The room had six beds stacked three high on the walls and approximately one foot by one foot wide space inbetween. You couldn't sit up straight on a bed. So once the nice German man was kind enough to switch rooms, we felt more comfortable and settled in for a bit. By settling in, I mean contorting our bodies into spaces which felt midly comfortable for an hour. We got ready for bed, popped a couple sleeping pills and said goodbye to Berlin.
peace out berlin.
hello paris.
When we woke up, we were an hour from Paris. We did our best to get ready in the small space and finished up right on time. We found our way to our hotel which was actually quite out of the way from all the sights. After grabbing our first Parisian croissants, we made our way to the Metro. The Paris Metro made me love the tube even more than I already do. Frankly, it was dirty, smelled like pee and body odor and was filled with dudes who just looked sketchy. We headed to the Louvre but the line was insane, being it was Easter Sunday and all. We went to Notre Dame after that which was amazing because we were allowed in during Easter mass. My favorite part was the choir. The music was so beautiful. We got lunch and headed to Champs Elyees to see l'Arc de Triumph. It proceeded to hail and then pour rain, so we ducked into Laduree for some macaroons and the most amazing hot chocolate in the world. Once the skies had clearer and Allie tried to convince us that you had to run across the most dangerous traffic circle in the world to get to the arc, we found the pedestrian subway and made our climb up. The views were amazing.
We headed back to our hotel, showered and got ready for dinner. Megan had looked up a few good places to go and once we had walked all over trying to find out, it looked like it had been abandoned for years. We also noticed that we were the only girls in the area, because we had stumbled upon a gay district. Well, we also found a great restaurant in the gay district. We had an amazing meal with veal, escargo, cheese plates and other delicious things I cannot pronounce. On the way out, an overly friendly Frenchman hailed us a cab that we didn't ask him for and it ended up being a blessing in disguise because we met one of the coolest cab drivers in Paris. He listens to Michael Jackson and that was all we needed to know.
We settled in for a good night's sleep. Unfortunately, Allie woke up with food poisoning. Presumably from one of the snails she ate the night before. After trying to print our boarding passes and making sure Allie was okay to stay in bed, Megan, Alex and I went to the Louvre. It was really cool to see what we did in there, but it's such a big place. We left and got on the bus to the Eiffel Tower. The lines there were too long for us because we didn't have time to climb it, but it was good to get that close. We met up with Allie and tried to get to the top of another hill but we didn't have the time. We headed to the hotel and got a van to the airport. It was nice to take an earlier flight because we were all so exhausted from the weekend. As much as I love visiting other cities, none of them even compare to London for me. I was really happy to get home.
This week should go quickly. I've got a lot coming up with registration, papers and internships so I'll be busy. I'm really looking forward to Amsterdam this weekend!
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