Berlin

Berlin and Budapest were tied for the top city I visited. Berlin is possibly one of the coolest cities I have ever been to. We arrived at our apartment exhausted from driving, ordered Chinese food and passed out on our first night there. The next morning we ventured out to see the city. We managed to get a tour of the city definitely something I would recommend if seeing Berlin as there is so much to see!

4 hours  of touring later we were frozen STIFF. We got a 600 year history in 4 hours and saw a lot of the city including a Nazi building, some social realist art and lots of how much was destroyed in the war.  We were able to see the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie and a number of other places in the city.

Brandenburg gate Where we also celebrated New Years!

Holocaust Memorial

example of Social Realism art on one of the only buildings still standing in the Nazi style of architecture

Part of the Nazi style architecture building. here used to be Swastikas in the circles.

famous statue of a mother holding her son. Specifically exposed to the elements to show the hardship and emotion. 

pretty building although I forget what exactly it is?

The next day (New Years!) was spent on another tour, this one for street art. It was so interesting to see the sort of underground culture that Berlin has so much of. Our guide was fantastic, talking about the street art and taking us to art studios around the city. A very cool experience!

Classic. Enjoying starbucks before the start of our Street art tour!

Some more street art. Our guide thought this was an interpretation of the very cute polar bear Knut who is well known throughout the world.

Part of the Metal art studio we went to

I wanted to make the pictures more interesting. So I made them pose!

PArt of a project to beautify different areas of Berlin called the 50 faces project.

New Years eve!

Check out that gate!

New Years was spent at the Brandenburg gate watching fireworks standing around (much like NYC.) Overall a good New years!

New Years day was spent mostly lounging around before heading into the city for dinner. 

Before we left the one thing I had wanted to do was see the Hitler exhibition at the German historical museum. It was pretty controversial when it first came out and I was excited to see what all the talk was about. It was a really interesting exhibit, filled with Hitler's rise and information on the party in general.  Overall a really good exhibit. 

We left Berlin around 2pm and after some snow, rain and other weathery things managed to make it home at about 11pm (our original ETA was 9pm...oops?) A very good trip overall although it felt good to get back to routine after 11 days of being away!