Saturday, March 22 - Departure

Our last day in Berlin started with checking out of the hostel. Once more, we walked through OUR neighborhood Prenzlauer Berg to a restaurant named 1900. It is situated on the Husemannstrasse, a street which was completely renovated in the style of the turn of the 20th century (hence the name of the restaurant). But before we entered the restaurant, we all had time to have a look at a local farmer's market. They offered an "all you can eat" buffet for brunch and it was amazing - the variety of food ranging from cerial and rolls to scrambled eggs and bacon, various cheeses and salads, olives, smoked salmon to deserts - mind blowing and filling.
After our extensive brunch, we picked up our luggage, walked to Schönhauser Allee S-Bahn stop and traveled to the Berlin Tegel Airport. This was the time to say goodbye to the city that has hosted us for a week.
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Friday, March 21

We got up at nine to eat breakfast and then took the U-Bahn to the Olympic Stadium, which also serves as a soccer stadium. After looking in the gift shop, we went into the actual stadium. Although I’m not that interested in soccer, I thought that the stadium was pretty impressive. We went through the rows of seats to the other side. After a while, it started raining so we headed back to the U-Bahn station. We took the train to Schloss Charlottenburg. There, we had lunch at an Italian restaurant where the portions were really large. I thought that was the best meal that we had that day. After lunch, we had the option to either go to the Schloss Charlottenburg or to the Egyptian Museum. I chose to go to the Museum but it turned out that they had moved the museum to a different part of the city. We then had the option of going to an Art-deco museum. We didn’t go there because some of the people really didn’t like art, so we split up into groups and wandered around the area. There wasn’t much going on because it was Good Friday. We met up again at six or so and started for the U-Bahn station. On our way there, we watched a local kids’ soccer game for a while. Luke had the idea of going back to the Sony center to watch a movie. We went there and bought our tickets. There was still some time before the movies started so we split up and found places to have dinner. I had really good ice cream at the mall after dinner. Two movies were playing that interested people: U2 3D and 10,000 BC. I went to U2 3D. It was really cool. I had never seen a 3D movie before and the music was great. We went back to the hostel after that.

Esra

Thursday, March 20

"We started off the day having breakfast at nine o’clock. I was going to wake up early and get a Döner with Ted and Nate. I was too tired so I slept in and just had the usual breakfast. After this, we took the U-Bahn down to the Pergamon Museum. When we got there, I was given the impression that the main part of the museum was going to be an Egyptian portion. We went inside and found out there was no Egyptian exhibit in the Museum that we were in. I found this information out by asking a museum staff member in German! I was so proud of myself. The museum was filled with Greek sculptures and modern building designs. Nate and I were bummed about the non-existence of the Egyptian exhibit, so we left after briskly browsing through the museum. We went to a crepe place and I ordered a delicious Nutella and banana crepe. I also picked up souvenirs for my mom and my sister. We all met back up at 12:30 and went down to Ku’damm. For the first time ever I rode a double decker bus. It was very fun to sit up top and enjoy the marvelous views of Berlin. When we arrived, the place was packed with a cornucopia of stores. The first thing that was explored was this wonderful church that had been damaged in the War. They made the actual church into a memorial and put a modern church right next to it. We visited both. The modern church was filled with beautiful tiles and an absolutely gorgeous organ. The old church was also pretty spectacular. It was amazing to see the artwork on the ceiling and there were some neat artifacts including a huge key smothered in gold and jewels. We than split up for three hours and went shopping. My shopping experience started out on a bad note. There was a six-year old beggar asking me for money. I kept telling him that I had no money and that I was sorry. I turned around to leave and was then kicked in the leg by this kid. If he weren’t a kid I would have had a word with him, but since he was young, I just walked off laughing. I had KFC for lunch, which was a huge disappointment to Uwe. Oh well, it was delicious despite the fact it was not exactly quintessential German food. After the lunch, we shopped around for a while and enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the city. We then proceeded on with the day and took the S-Bahn back home. Uwe showed us this wonderful Currywurst stand. It was delicious. We then cooled down for a little while in the hostel and than took the S-Bahn to a bowling alley. I am currently bowling at this present time and am having a blast."

Jeremy

Wednesday, March 19

Today we woke up one hour early to see the Reichstag. I thought that the Reichstag was cool because we got to climb into a large glass dome and see most of Berlin from above. After visiting the Reichstag we traveled to the Holocaust Memorial. The Holocaust Memorial is a section of Berlin filled with over 2000 cement blocks of different shapes and sizes. You get a very eerie feeling when walking through the Memorial because it is confusing and you lose your general sense of direction. After exploring the maze of cement blocks, we went to the underground part of the Memorial. This area had lots of information about what happened in the 1940’s. I found that reading about how many people suffered back then was very depressing.

Teddy

Friday, March 21 (Day 5)

We started off with a trip to the Olympiastadion built for the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany. Students seemed to be impressed with the stadium and the local soccer team Herta BSC and you will soon see some fan gear of that club at Hanover High. We had lunch at a very good Italian restaurant and visited Schloss Charlottenburg afterwards. My personal highlight today was following Nate's suggestion to watch "U2 3D" at the IMAX at the Sony Center. Some of us did, others went to another show. The U2 movie was quite an experience - I have never seen Bono, The Edge & Co that close and I would state that this was better than my 1993 Zooropa Tour concert experience in the Berlin Olympic Stadium.
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March 19th (Day 3)

After an early breakfast, we started our day with a visit to the Reichstag, home of the German parliament. While we left a little later than planned, a brisk pace brought us to our 10:00 tour just on time. The Reichstag was burned down in 1945 so much of the building was rebuilt in a modern, more minimalist style than one would expect of a historic building like the Reichstag. We did see some remnants of the older structure throughout the tour, such as the preserved signatures and graffiti of occupying Russian soldiers on some walls and a piece of the old tunnel between the Reichstag and one of the adjacent parliamentary buildings. Other highlights included the prayer room, which had a unique style and catered to all religions, and the suspended rowing boats in one of the buildings symbolizing the healthy competition within government. Our time at the Reichstag ended with its newest addition, the huge, glass dome on top. With a panoramic view over the city, the dome definitely stands out and is a busy tourist attraction. After spending some time looking out over the city, we left the Reichstag to get some lunch and have some chill time.

From the Reichstag we went to the Sony Center, where we all scattered for a couple hours for some shopping, eating, and the odd pool game. Our next stop was the holocaust memorial, just down the street from the Reichstag. The memorial itself was very unique in that there was intentionally no symbolism or reference to the holocaust in any way. It was basically a square filled with 2,711 large cement blocks of varying heights. After walking through it, we went underground to the memorial museum. While this may not have been an as uplifting end to the day as the chocolate store, it was certainly an interesting and touching exhibit containing both pictures and pieces of writing from the holocaust. Following that, we made a quick stop at the Stasi museum, which had some interesting pieces on the Berlin wall before heading back to the hostel.

Our dinner, at a restaurant called Oswald, had a nice variety of food ranging from Italian to American. After that the tired people went home, while the rest of us went to chillax at a pool hall, which was a very fun end to the night.

Nate Ashton

Thursday, March 20 (Day Four)

We started out with a visit to the Pergamon-Museum at the Museumsinsel. Afterwards we shortly visited Humboldt-University. Then we hopped on the Bus #200 and took the scenic route to the western part of the city center. There we continued our exploration: Memorial church, Ku'damm and not to forget KaDeWe, where some of us had lunch on the top floor at the deli counter.









This evening we went out bowling.
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Wednesday, Day Three

Today, we got an early guided tour of the Reichstag, the German parliament building, followed by a walking tour through Tiergarten-Park. We spent about 3 hours at Potsdamer Platz and walked down to the Holocaust Memorial.

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Wednesday, March 19th (Day 3)

Today we have gone to the Jewish memorial (being the key-point of the day). The memorial was 2,711 stone blocks ranging from 1-at least what it seemed like 12 feet at least. This area was very overwhelming in feeling, a great passion at trying to picture that there are 2,711 stones but how many Jewish people were killed in the terrible incident. A crime by the Nazis that left the door of “righteousness” for Jews to be scorned for all history. I also remember going to the Reichstag and sitting in the upper area of the political conferences (not whilst one was going on but I was there was one going on…). We also went to a park were illustrated in polished gold was Beethoven and Bach. Through this park is the Sony center, were we went to an “American” sports bar…or at least what they thought would be one, it was called “Play-Offs” it had pictures of what would be pin-up girls and lots of arena football being showed. This night we went to play pool it was fun.

-Isaac (^.^)

Berlin, Day Two (Tuesday)

Today started with us taking the U-Bahn to Klosterstraße, where we had a good view of the Berliner Fernsehturm (Television Tower). After that we got to see a part of the old Berlin city wall, built around 1250, that’s still standing. I thought it was pretty neat that one part of the original wall was actually still standing. We then went to visit a very nicely restored old church. The inside was huge with giant arches holding up the roof, which included an intricate wood structure. We walked though the city more and saw some more nice old buildings. We then went to a photo exhibition at the Deutsches Historisches Museum about events from recent years. I am very interested in photography, so I enjoyed going. After that, we went to a nice Bavarian-style restaurant, and then moved on to Checkpoint Charlie. I thought that was interesting because of how much that area has changed in recent years, with cars now driving right through the street to former east Berlin with no problem, and then in quite recent history the same street was the center of so much tension. We saw a lot of really nice cars on the way back, including a Ferrari F430, a Bentley coupe that set the World Ice Speed Record, and a special edition of the 253mph Bugatti Veyron supercar. I really loved seeing the cars, because that’s always been a passion of mine, and cars like that are not something I see very often around the US. At the end of the day we went to the Brandenburg Tor (Brandenburg Gate), which was really cool to see, since it’s been involved in so much history over the years. It looked great as well, with the sun setting behind it, so we got some great pictures.

David Swenson

Berlin day 2

Today we got up and we went to this fantastic breakfast - it seemed like every one was happy with it. We soon left to go to the old part of the city and we saw the old wall and one of the oldest restaurants in the city. Then we went to a church which was bombed during World War II. We soon left to another church (Nikolai-Church - the oldest in Berlin) with a shopping mall but it was closing time. We walked around the stores and we all got some gifts. Then we were walking and we hit this plaza which is dedicated to the leaders of the Communist movement in the 19^th century. We continued walking and hit this street vender and we got sucked into his theme. - I bought a fake gas mask which I thought was real and the guys bought these Russian hats which was cool.

Then we got to the German History Museum. We visited an exhibition about journalistic photography which was odd to my taste but it was ok.

Next we got some amazing lunch –it was a German restaurant and the food was very tasty. Every one seemed to be happy with it.

We went to Check Point Charlie witch was kinda short and I wanna see again. On this shopping street (Friedrichstrasse), we wandered around and saw this 6,000 Euros watch (which translates to more then $ 9,000). Then we discovered the Bugati car store. They had a $ 2.3 million car which will be released soon. We left to see the Brandenburg Gate which was amazing. Next to the Gate we found and Starbucks and we had a drink there.

Andrew Burke

Chocolatier Fassbender & Rausch, Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin

While the students are still writing the blog post, I have some pictures of today's last itinerary item: The Chocolatier Fassbender & Rausch at Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin.



Thanks to Mr. Glenney, we found this unique spot in Berlin and gladly served as the field committee for checking out international places of chocolate for the March Intensive Chocolate Course. Enjoy the pictures of Berlin sights like "Brandenburg Gate", "Reichstag" and "Gedächtniskirche" made of pure chocolate ...




... and an Easter Bunny made of an uncoutable number of small chocolate bunnies. Yummi ...


Look at the student's lightened up face at the end of an excursion day.
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Berlin Day 2

Berlin, Day 2
Today, after breakfast, we walked all the way to the Deutsche Welle building. Deutsche Welle is a large German T.V. broadcasting agency. We met up with five Brown students there, and split into two groups for a tour of the building.




First we saw a room in which they film one of their shows, and the tour guide explained to us how two tricks that they use in filming the show work: "blue-box" as he called it, which is green-screening, and the teleprompter. After this, we went to several other producing rooms, as well as several editing rooms. The DW was a pretty neat place.

From the DW building, we walked to a section of the Wall, where a tower had been built as a memorial. From the tower, we could look out and see East and West Berlin.




We also went to a park, and saw a whole wall covered in graffiti, with people along it continuing to write over each other's graffiti.
From there, we went to a shopping mall for an hour and a half, and then we came back to the hostel.


– Luke Hansen

Our first afternoon and evening

After our arrival in Berlin and the check in at the hostel, we took a short walk through the neighborhood (Prenzlauer Berg) to a Greek restaurant (Taverna Apollon), because by then it was almost 6 and we haven't had a decent meal in some time. After dinner, we continued our walk and stopped by the "Kulturbrauerei", the former "Schultheiss" brewery (built in 1891) which was renovated in the 90s and turned into a meeting place for cultural events and cultural groups in general. You can find there theaters and movie theaters, restaurants, concert halls, a part of the city museum, public restrooms (yes, sometimes important) and a lot more. We took a walk on "Schönhauser Allee" - the most famous (shopping) street in Prenzlauer Berg. We walked by Gethsemane Church on Stardarder Str. (also built in early 1890s) famous for its role during the democratic movement in East Berlin in 1989.
I guess, we will get a good night's sleep today after the flight and a long day.
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Safely arrived

We have arrived in Prenzlauer Berg, the part of the city of Berlin which will be our home for the next week and which we will explore for the remaining hours of daylight today. We have checked in our hotel. I hope to write more details later.
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Infos on luggage and weather

On luggage:
Everybody can have two pieces of ckecked luggage and one carry on. I believe it is 50 lb per checked and 10 lb for carry on luggage. Please be aware of the liquids rule in carry on luggage (the one quart ziplock bag).

I would suggest that the equipment (camera, computer, etc.) goes into the carry on as well as one set of clothing for the (unlikely) case that the checked luggage arrives later than we do.

I would only like to stress that every person has to be able to carry her/his own luggage (reminder: Most of Berlin's public transportation workers will continue to be on strike next week).


On weather:
Here is a weather forecast for Berlin for the first days of next week:

Sat
Partly Sunny
46°F | 37°F
Sun
Rain
42°F | 39°F
Mon
Chance of Rain
42°F | 30°F


I hope this helps when packing clothing.
CU all tomorrow at 4.30 pm
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Departure on Sat.

As stated on the handout you have received today, we will meet at 4.30 pm on Saturday (3/15) in front of our school. I hope to depart before 5. Your passport will be the ticket to the bus ;-). If you have questions, write an email.
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Last meeting before departure

I would like to invite you all (students) to our last meeting before departure on WEDNESDAY (3/12) during ACTIVITY PERIOD. It will be a short meeting and it is a short activity period - so please rush to room 137 so that we have enough time to get over last minute items like check lists, meeting times, etc. One item on the list will be equipment. We need to discuss what we need, what individuals can bring and what we need to borrow from the school. See you on Wednesday.
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Getting ready

We just got one more item ready for our TRIP TO BERLIN - our blog page. In a week, we will be in Berlin and start posting our impressions and experiences here on this page.
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