Berlin and a New Beginning!

Friday was the last day of the TEFL course!! Woo, we did it! We had two workshops then were free to go afterwards. I made sure I had everything in my portfolio and was one of the first people to hand it on. I’m really proud of myself for how disciplined and organized I’ve been during this course. Usually I would have been scrambling until the 5:00 deadline. Most of us met back at the Café later on. Honza and his friends were going to take us around town. Honza bought a bottle of champagne and we all had a toast for Shelley’s Birthday! They took us to this really cool bar and it was so nice because they had reserved an area in the bar for us (you have to do that in the Czech Republic but we always forget). I asked Tomas if he thought I looked Ukrainian (a lot of people here think I’m Ukrainian for some reason.) He said, “You do not look Ukrainian. You look very European, but when you talk, I know you are American.” Hahahaha. On our walk after the bar we were at the top of this huge hill and it had the most beautiful view of Prague. Unfortunately my camera couldn’t capture how beautiful it was. We were all saying how nice it would be in the summer to have a picnic up there with a bottle of wine. Then, we tried to go the Roxy because Honza has been talking it up for weeks now. But the bouncers wouldn’t let him in for some reason. Oh dear. So then they took us to a House Boat Bar. It was great little spot I probably wouldn‘t have known about otherwise. They were playing techno music and we were all dancing and sang Happy Birthday to Shelley at midnight.

Saturday was a well deserved lazy day. That night we all met up again for Shelley’s Birthday dinner. It was an early night though since half of us were going to Berlin the next day!

Sunday morning I met Shelley and Heather at the Metro and we made our way to the Train Station to meet Becky, Starkey, Kristen and Josh. Our train ride to Berlin was going to be about 4 ½ hours. I thought that we’d all fall asleep right away, but we were mostly too excited to sleep. The scenery on the way was pretty, but I’m sure it’s beautiful in the Spring and Summer. We arrived in Berlin at the biggest and coolest Train station I’ve ever seen. Thank god we were with Josh because it was his 4th or 5th time to Berlin, so he knew how to work the metro system there, which is huge and crazy. Even bigger than London’s underground. Another great thing about Josh is that he is doing his Thesis on architecture in Berlin, so he knows A LOT about the city and was tour guide the whole time. We made our way to our hostel, the 3 Little Pigs, which is by far the BEST hostel I’ve ever stayed at. It had a great lounge, private & clean rooms, and a huge buffet spread for Breakfast for 5 Euros. After we freshened up, we went to Alexander Platz and found a restaurant to eat at. We ordered some German beer, which I wasn’t very fond of unfortunately, but it came in a cool glass that I wanted to steal. I ordered a cabbage roll, which tasted very similar to the pigs in a blanket my grandma makes, and parsley potatoes. It was pretty delicious!





After lunch/dinner, we walked all around. What’s really interesting about Berlin is that there aren’t these huge, amazing sights to see like in London or Rome, but it’s the history there makes the city so fascinating. After my weekend there, I can’t believe how naïve I used to be about the Cold War and Communism. Our schools delve so much into WWII and the Holocaust, but they skim over the other stuff, which is just as important. I felt pretty emotional the entire time. They went through the War, Nazis, and Communism, and have only been completely free for 20 years. That is so recent. Some of the people there are a bit rude, but when you think about what they went through, then how they raised their children, how could you be upset with them.

Many of the buildings there have bullet holes in them from WWII.






The TV Tower

The Berliner Dom is covered in soot from the bombs that went off.

This the Alte Museum which has some great exhibits. Hitler used to give speeches from the top of the steps and the entire field would be filled with people. It was crazy standing where Hitler once stood.

This is the book burning memorial. All of the books with Jewish authors, or anything dealing with Judaism were burnt.

After our little walk it was getting dark so we went back to the hostel to get ready for the pub crawl. Pub crawls are great because instead of wandering around looking for a good place to go to, they take you to 4 or 5. We were all pretty tired, but never fear, we all got a second wind. I didn’t get many pictures of the crawl, but the starting bar was really cool. It had really interesting art pieces (we weren’t allowed to take pictures because they were all for sell). As we were leaving a man was welding his newest creation. We went to three more bars and our group quickly dispersed. Kristen and I were troopers and went to the last club, which was one of the best clubs I’ve ever been to. The music they were playing was amazing and non-stop and everybody was dancing and singing. AND I am pleased to tell my London Crew that they are STILL playing Put Your Hands up for Detroit! Woo!!!! It just sucked that no one got as excited as me. Also, Kristen saved a German girl in the bathroom…she was stuck in a stall and saying “Allo? Allo?” Kristen high kicked that door in and saved the girl. We are still laughing about this. We tried to go home but the subway wasn’t running for another half an hour and we lost the card with our hostel address on it. One of the German Boys led us to get some food…doner kebaps mmm mmm! The last time I had this was in Barcelona and I’m obsessed with them. They are cheap and delicious. The German boy made sure we got on the right subway and we went back to the hostel.

The next morning we walked around Berlin all day. Unfortunately, it was raining and really windy and a bit miserable. But that didn’t stop us from seeing all the sights.

The Holocaust Memorial. The architect wanted people to feel really disoriented walking through it and confused as to where they were going. It doesn’t look like anything from here, but once you start walking through it, the statues around you keep getting bigger and bigger. The ground is really uneven and we lost some of our group in it which is the point.

The Brandenburg Gate




A German and Russian soldier. Of course I’m being a typical American and holding a Starbucks coffee (hey, it was cold out and I was tired). After this, the German Soldier started yelling at us to put money in the tip box (umm excuse me, it’s a TIP box). Then he dropped the American flag. WTF.

The Reichstag…German Parliament. There are some really interesting pictures of this when Hitler forced someone to burn it. They built the glass dome because they wanted it to be transparent. They aren’t hiding anything anymore. All of the Parliament offices are glass and you can always watch them working. We saw a huge meeting going on in one of the Conference rooms.

A memorial of those who tried to jump the Berlin wall and escape by this river. They were shot and killed in the river.

Checkpoint Charlie. In October 1961, the U.S. tanks and USSR tanks confronted each other. If anyone had made the first shot, it would have started WWIII.

We went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum which was absolutely fascinating. They had so many stories of people and pictures. Stories of people the Soviets left to die, people who built tunnels and escaped or were caught, women who were sent to prison, and people who had their children taken away from them. It was weird to think that the Germans we had met the night before could have been the kids who were taken away from their families. They a bunch of books there with the names of people who had gone missing...There was a last name spelled "Fric" which really freaked me out. It also really put everything into perspective for me: These were the types of reasons that our ancestors left Europe and escaped to America for freedom. We really are so naïve and ungrateful in some ways because we have no idea what people went through for us. Nothing like this would EVER happen in America.

The Berlin Wall. There is not much left of it anymore and understandably so. There were two walls with a death strip in the middle. Bricks line the streets of Berlin showing where the wall used to stand.

After our tour, we were all pretty exhausted and freezing. We went back to the hostel then went out to dinner. We found a really cool bar and hung our there for a while. We took the subway back to the hostel and had ten minutes until the subway closed, but then the subway stopped and the lady kicked everyone off. At least, we figured out that's what she was talking about since it was in German.

The next day we split up and I went with Becky and Starkey to the Pergamon Museum. We saw The Pergamon Alter from Turkey and the Gates of Babylon.

We caught our train and arrived around 9:30. We heard that our grades had been sent to us, so Kristen and I went to the school to check our e-mail. I received a Pass 1 and start work on Monday! Woo! I’m so relieved and happy that everything is coming to together. Now I just need to find a place to live and get a phone haha. And I also need to fall in love with Prague like I fell in love with Berlin. I think it’s just been difficult because we had a huge lifestyle change and then were thrown into work at the school and didn‘t know if we were going to have jobs or not. It will be so nice when we’re all settled in and aren’t stressed and have more time to explore.