Berlin

Friday night I flew to Berlin Tegel Airport for a weekend in the German capital. Much like Munich, we came to celebrate a family birthday and do a bit of sightseeing. Saturday was dedicated to having a nice 4 course lunch in an Italian restaurant, then driving to an apartment in the area for tea, coffee, various kinds of cake while listening to my host mother play her flute, and read the stories her mother wrote after a writing workshop she went to. After a day of eating good food, sitting in comfortable chairs, and dressing in nice attire, we moved on to the the next day's program of a crash course tour of the Innenstadt (central district of the city). The start was an unofficial bus tour from my host family, who have many ties with the city, as we drove from our hotel to the Alexanderplatz. Alexanderplatz lies in what was the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, and was a major center for Berlin in the 20th century and is to this day. From there we took a bus to Potsdamer Platz to see fragments of the wall and take an elevator ride to a panoramic viewpoint of the city and surrounding area. From there we walked along a paved road, which a few decades ago, was the "Death Zone" between East and West to the Jewish Memorial, Brandenburg Gate, Pariser Platz, and lastly the Reichstag. The large glass-domed Parliament building of the largest democracy in Europe. Not much sightseeing happened after this point; instead, we went to go back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, and got a taxi to the airport to fly back to Nordrhein-Westfalen because I, unfortunately, had school the next day. I know I can look forward to my end of the year seminar in June and going back to Berlin to experience more in-depth what makes the capital of Germany

such an interesting city.