Berlin - du bist so wunderbar/kannst so hässlich sein

A month has passed since my last post. I don't know what happened but I guess I was very busy. Since the beginning of April I have been to all kind of places including Berlin. Clement and I met in Stuttgart to drive with two strangers and one car to Berlin. It was the Easter weekend and as you can imagine, the streets were full of cars. Luckily, Clement just bought a tablet so we could play angry birds for hours and hours. What should have been six turned out to take us a little longer but just in time for a midnight dinner, we arrived at the flat of our host, Jan. Jan welcomed us with a little homecooked meal and after that we went straight to bed to be ready and energetic for a day full of sight seeing! Jan as our tour guide did such a good job that we bumped into one of the four people that we know in Berlin! Clement's friend Laure! Unbelievable but true. So she joined us for a Döner on the Alexander Platz as well as for a nice dinner at Jan's place with her friend Hortense.

We had fun shouting at people that it's forbidden to smile and to have fun while interacting with the memorial. 

On Saturday, Jan left us to spend Easter with his family but was so kind to leave us he keys and his room. The day was a bit messy. We really missed a tour guide as well as a wizard. We got lost and ran around in the rain and what felt like minus 10 degrees like headless chicken because we couldn't decide on where to go and what to see. We had a list of 25 museums that we wanted to visit but all of them welcomed us with a long cue. And standing in the coldness waiting to get in didn't sound very appealing to us. So, we ended up just going to one, the "Topografie des Terrors". It's an exhibition about the nazi regime (a topic that you cannot escape) and shows the cruelty of that time. It kills all the good mood. It really kills all the trust that you want to have in humanity. But a saying that I find quite suitable here is "History is the crumbling of sense". We ended the day visiting another friend, Arne. Arne called his grandma to make sure he has everything he needs for making an amazing german dish for us called "Birnen mit Klütje". Just Google it... too bad that Google can't give you an impression of how good it was! But if you contact me, I can give you Arne's adress (or the one of his grandma) and they will make it for you, for sure!

On Sunday we got up early to get tickets for a tour with Berliner Unterwelten e.V. at the Gesundbrunnen. We wanted to climb into the last standing tower that Hitler built to defend Berlin, but we didn't have to right shoes. I you go to Berlin, bring the right shoes to do this tour. It should be awesome. If you can only bring one pair of shoes and because it's Berlin, you want to bring the nice ones (vintage, they have to be vintage of course), you can do one of the other eight (nine, ten) tours they offer. I'm sure all of them are nice. Our tour started at one so we had time to visit the
Mauerpark, a big fleamarket that takes place every sunday. We had some nice veggie food there and bought some cutesy little things. Then the tour started. We did the one through two bunkers that could have saved some percent of the inhabitians for some days. The Führer did a great job and explained in a very entertaining way the fun facts about the bunker. It was crazy to hear how many times the world stood on the edge to erasing itself. The bombs on the radar that were not really there but because of the flaws of the Sovjets. And this brave commander that convinced everyone that it's his shitty programm to recognize bombs and not really America sending them their greetings.

So all in all a very packed weekend, full of reunions, history and capital vibes.












Berlin is just beautiful in it's very own ways.