Year Abroad - Heidelberg Part 4

Christmas in Deutschland

Christmas in Germany was everything I expected it to be: lots of amazing Christmas markets filled with Wurst and Glühwein, amazing advent calendars (a mini Rittersport chocolate behind every door - YES PLEASE!), lots of chilly weather and a teeny bit of snow!

At the beginning of December I spent a brilliant couple of days in beautiful Bayern (Bavaria), where I visited the town of Bayreuth, the city of Nuremberg and my Bristol bezzies!

Friday 6th December I got up at the crack of dawn - 8am - to jump on a bus to Nuremberg, before getting a train to Bayreuth, where my friend Rachel is living this term. As we were coming in to Nuremberg on the bus it started snowing, only a little bit, but enough for me to get very excited. Little did I realise just how snowy it would be Bayreuth! From Nuremberg I got a (very speedy) train to Bayreuth, an had my first experience of the crazy Bavarian lingo! To my unexpecting south-west-germanised (I'm sure that's a word...) ears, the kindly train conductor came over to check my ticket and greeted me with a surprising "GRÜß GOTT". Now don't get me wrong, I have been educated in the beautiful Bayerische ways (thanks Eva <3) but somehow I had completely forgotten about their version of "Guten Tag". I'm sure the train conductor must have thought I was some rude, ignorant foreigner for staring at him, before sorting myself out and handing him my ticket... Arriving in Bayreuth I was greeted by the lovely Rachel, who gave me a quick tour of the pretty, snowy town on the way to her WG (student flat). So many of the buildings are old and grand, making the town a really cool place to visit.

The school Rachel is working at in all it's grandeur

After a short stop off at Rachel's flat to warm up, we headed in to the centre of town to check out the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) and Winterdorf (lots of really cool wooden huts joined together with amazing varieties Glühwein!). It was so pretty in the evening when it was all lit up, and literally every lamppost in Bayreuth had a Christmas tree attached to it!

Enjoying the Glühwein at Winterdorf

On the way to the station on Saturday we went the long way via the park to get in as much snow experience as we could. It pretty much doesn't snow in Heidelberg so I had to make the post of it while I could!

So much Schnee!

Sadly in my books, when it comes to making to "making the most of snow" this actually means doing a slightly dramatic slip up whilst zooming to the train station! So however much I love the snow, it's probably a good thing that we haven't had any in Heidelberg yet, or I'd have at least a broken wrist by now...

In Nuremberg we met up with Anna and Frankie (from Bristol) and had some typical Bavarian food for (I went for the Nuremberg sausages and potato salad) before walking up the hill to the castle for a view over the city. After a quick look at the view and taking some photos it was time to hit up the Christmas market. Now these was no easy task... Most of Germany (including 3 coach loads of exchange students from Heidelberg) had decided to descend upon the famed Christmas market in Nuremberg. Don't get me wrong, it was very pretty and had all the things you expect to buy in a Christmas market: chocolate covered fruit, Christmas decorations, gingerbread hearts etc. However to get to all these Christmassy goodies you had to fight through the crowds! It was a fun experience but I'd definitely like to go to Nuremberg again when the whole world isn't there too.

In Heidelberg the whole town has been taken over by the Weihnachtsmarkt! There is one in every available square and even at the castle, with endless Wurst, Glühwein and gingerbread hearts. I incidentally did get a loyalty card to one particular Glühwein stand... and yes I did fill it and claim my free one... oops. Every year for the whole of December Heidelberg is taken over by the sparkly excitement that is the Weihnachtsmarkt, making it one of the best places to do some Christmas shopping, but also making what is already a relatively small city extremely packed! You have to allow a good extra 10 minutes to get to lessons, so you can fight through the crowds of German, American and Asian tourists...

Christmas market in Heidelberg

For my final weekend in Heidelberg my family came to visit, so we did all the touristy things I have done with other people and added in some exciting new extras like the Studentenkarzer and a tour around the castle.

The Studentenkarzer (Student Prison)

As part of our touristing we went to the little town of Ladenburg, which was about 10 minutes from Heidelberg by train. This village is the epitome of German cuteness, and all the houses look like they have fallen out of a fairytale! The Christmas market was tiny compared to those in Nuremberg and Heidelberg, but that just made it even more lovable. We tested the Glühwein (it has to be done, everywhere) and went wandered around the tiny town centre before heading back to Heidelberg on the train. It may have been one of my favourite Christmas markets I have been to! And I've been to a fair few, if my Glühwein mug collection is anything to go by...

Ladenburg Christmas market

Basically this year I have discovered that one of the Christmassy places to be is Germany! There were definitely some things I missed (putting up the tree, listening to endless Christmas songs on the radio, having a fake Christmas with my friends) but for a general Christmas feel, endless gift ideas and a LOT of Glühwein and yummy foods, Germany really is the best place for it!

So watch out German friends, I will definitely back next year ;)

Year Abroad - Heidelberg Part 3

A blog from Königstuhl

This morning I had a Czech exam, so to recover from the stress of learning pointless vocab (úroda means crop, in case you ever need to know...) and turning up to my exam to realise I'd forgotten my Deutsch-English dictionary, the obvious thing for me to do was jump on the Bergbahn to Königstuhl - free with my Semesterticket. So here I am now, chilling (literally, it's freezing up here!) with a warming hot chocolate about to fill you in on all the latest year abroad antics.

The view from Königstuhl 

Last weekend was a killer. Two nights in a row spent in Halle02 (where we saw Klingande!) staying out until 4am led to a weekend of lying in bed ignoring all my homework, followed by a huge pizza and ice cream pig out on Saturday to help us recover. (Massive, yummy take-away gluten-free pizza for under 8 euros? Yes please!). Sunday we were finally feeling a little better so jumped on an S-Bahn to Mannheim to see our local handball team play, the Rhein-Neckar Löwen.

Scoring their first goal!

If you've never seen a handball game then go!! They are so fun, with very attractive players (Uwe! <3) doing all sorts of crazy high-leg kick stunts, lots of goals and shouting!

I think we were probably the rowdiest there (aside from the keen-bean grannies in front of us who kept up a chant of "LÖWEN" *clapclapclap*) joining in with all the chanting and getting way too excited at each of the 32 goals! We came out on a handball high from all the excitement - to sum up the Rhein-Neckar Löwen do gefallen uns!

This last week has been a bit more relaxed, with a weekend of touristing with Rachel (who travelled for so long to see me!) and curry and roast... Rachel and I did all the standard tourist things Heidelberg has to offer, but also took a trip up Philosophen Weg, which I hadn't done before. It was well worth a visit, providing a spectacular view over Heidelberg and the castle, and has all sort of historical monuments along the walk - although we only managed to make it to Bismarcksäule before we decided it was getting too dark and headed back. You can read in detail about our touristing adventures in Rachel's blog here.

Heidelberg from Philosophen Weg

One thing which has become a regular occurrence over the last few weeks is trying to explain very British things to German people (and Alex J. suggested I blogged about it ;) ). A few examples have been trying to explain GCSE/A-levels, yorkshire puddings and food babies (which they loved and found hilarious!). And on top of that, the look you get when you add milk to your English tea along with "...Are you having milk with it?" is priceless. You become so used to something in your own country that you don't realise how weird it is until you try and explain it to someone else. So we have to make life changing decisions over what subjects to do, therefore whether we will go to uni, and then which career we want, at the age of 14. We then have to study 12 of them (a huuuuuuge number when you think about it!) for 2 years before randomly dropping a load of them to leave you with just 4. Um, what? Clearly teachers in Britain are very trusting of their teenage pupils in deciding their career path so young.

The beauty of a well made Yorkshire pudding

Then we eat a pastry covered/filled with sauce (gravy <3) with our roast dinner which is essentially a slightly smaller Christmas dinner, but we eat it every Sunday, sometimes even for lunch. And no it's not sweet, it's savoury. Oh and when you're making your first roast in Germany, go and bake a hilarious GF one which looks nothing like a Yorkshire pudding to confuse them even more! (Sorry Lukas, this is what they really look like...)

Finally making the classic English-person-abroad mistake of translating food-baby literally, so that they actually think you're pregnant (also do not translate "I am full" to "Ich bin voll", ditto "I am cold" to "Ich bin kalt" - it can lead to awkward misconceptions...) and you then have to backtrack crazily and explain that you only look pregnant because you ate 2 roast dinners and half a crumble... phew.

Next weekend I shall be jumping on a plane (Lufthansa no less - thank you Erasmus grant!) and heading home for a weekend, so will natürlich pick up some squash (you never EVER drink it straight) and mince pies (filled with fruit and not meat...), to blow their minds just a little bit more with our mad English ways.

Anyway I now can't feel my hands so I think it's time I got the rickety Bergbahn back down the mountain and headed home to the warmth of a cup of tea.

Bis bald xxx

Year Abroad - Heidelberg Part 2

So now I have finally settled in to my life at Heidelberg - this week I even managed to make it to all of my lessons! A few of the things I have done over the last couple of weeks :

- started lessons, eek!
-  have sort of figured out the system here and where everything is..
- got up at 7am to do a washing. Ah uni halls I didn't miss you.
- Fi came to stay!
- we stayed out until 4am (Fi fell asleep on the dance floor)
- did all the tourist things with Fi again: Schloss, Königstuhl, Altstadt etc
- went to the ZOO!!! (which is on my uni campus - so cool)
- went on a trip to Freiburg and the Schwarzwald (Black Forest)
- Sam came to visit
- did all the touristy things again!
- went to Frankfurt and did touristy things there
- finally made it to a whole weeks worth of lessons!
- borrowed a bike off of Melli (my flatmate) and accidentally went on a 17km bike ride

After much organisation and confusion I finally sorted out my timetable and what I am actually going to study in Heidelberg (just in time to send a form home and get my Erasmus grant - yippea!). I decided on: Czech, New High German, History of the English language, Introduction to German politics, Germany in Europe and Translation into English. So far they have all been OK and easy to understand (especially the English ones tehe) but the Germany in Europe generally consists of me sitting there being lost/confused and asking my friend what's going on.... hopefully I'll get the hang of it soon.

After a week of being confused and stressed my Zwillingschwester (Fi) came to visit and we did all the fab tourist things Heidelberg has to offer. Including 2 visits to the cake shop, amazing chocolate from the chocolate shop and a very large dinner in the Mensa... Sunny Saturday afternoon was dedicated to a visit to Heidelberg Zoo, which is about a 5 minute walk across campus from my halls. As it's only €6 entry for students it was definitely worth visiting, and so much fun seeing all the cute animals - baby meerkats!!!! We also luckily managed to time walking past the seals to see the seal show, which was fab! They could balance a ball or a tray on their noses and one of them clapped after the other seals had finished! So to sum up, I love the zoo and will definitely be going back...

Getting drenched at the open air museum

Sunday was another excursion day, with a trip to an open air museum in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) and to the city of Freiburg. Now, I know we are English so should be able to deal with the vast quantities of rain which descended upon Baden-Wüttemberg that day, but we really couldn't at all and got absolutely soaked! The museum had traditional houses from the Black Forest, with old stoves and cattle sheds and tiny huts for baking bread and brewing beer. Some of the houses were so dark and smelt so strongly of smoke, so it was pretty surprising that people had lived in these places up until the 1920s. They also showed us some typical Schwarzwalde Tracht, which is the Black Forest equivalent to Dirndls and Lederhosen. Basically the men wore suits and the women wore nice dresses but with these weird hats covered in pompoms or huge hats covered in glass gems. Personally I think I prefer the Bavarian style but I wont say that too loudly... 

After the open air museum we drove through the Black Forest to the city of Freiburg. Freiburg has an old town very similar to Heidelberg, and is very pretty in places with the little canal running through it. Sadly the centre was bombed a lot during the war so has been replaced by lots of slightly less attractive buildings... When we arrived in Freiburg we were dropped off and told to go and find some lunch before meeting back for the walking tour. After checking out some restaurants on the main square and realising just how extortionately expensive they were, we decided the best bet would be to go off the beaten track a bit. Eventually we found a moderately priced restaurant which offered Bratwurst (which was all we wanted....) so we thought we'd try it out. Unfortunately the entire restaurant experience went from bad to worse! On the way in I managed to fall down some concrete steps, bruising my arm pretty badly, then we sat down and ordered our food which turned out to be completely not what we were expecting - Tilly and I ordered Wurstsalat, which we assumed would be hot Wurst with salad... how wrong we were! Google it, it's gross. So we finished our plate of shredded cold Wurst and decided to pay, which consisted of the waiter throwing the receipt in Alex's face and shouting at us to just give him the money and we could sort it out among ourselves later! Needless to say we didn't tip... 

Don't worry guys, I just had ice cream... 

After a slightly more brief than expected walking tour - the cathedral was closed... - we went on a hunt to found ourselves some Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte - Black Forest Gateau. You may think you have tried this already in the UK and that it can't possibly be any different, but it was HUGE. A slice could feed a small family easily, and the amount of Kirsch schnapps they put in it could make a small person a little tipsy. It does look amazing though with all that cream and chocolate, I definitely need to try and come up with a GF version!

A week of hard core German uni work and lessons followed, before Sam arrived on the Thursday night :)

(Sam's photo) at the top of Königstuhl

Despite the fact I had been up there twice already, we decided to do the Schloss on Friday, but this time we walked up instead of going with the funicular, which was a really nice way to do it as you get to slowly see more and more of Heidelberg as you go up. Saturday we did the long bus trip up to Königstuhl (Sam slept the whole way) and had a picnic at the top looking out over the view, which was a fab idea because then you really get to take everything in! It was such a sunny day that we could even see the Pfalz forest and mountains in the distance, so it was a pretty spectacular view. 

This picture lies about the weather... it rained a LOT

On Sunday Sam was flying back to the UK (booo) from Frankfurt so we decided to make the day into a tourist trip around the city. Not really knowing how much Frankfurt had to offer in terms of touristing, we arrived there at about 11am, with Sam's train to the airport leaving at 3:30pm. Fi was our tour guide for the day, so we started our tour with a slight (45 min - sorry Fi ;) ) detour around a random suburb of Frankfurt before arriving in a pretty old bit called Sandhausen. We then zipped up to the main square for some Currywurst mit Pommes and to admire the old looking buildings - think chocolate box and you'll have the image right there. Other sights we visited in Frankfurt were: the Dom (cathedral), the Zeil (a big shopping centre with the longest escalator in the world!), the old opera house and Goethe's House (every city has to have one ;) ). The only problem was that the Frankfurt marathon was on, so it took us aaaaaaaages to cross any road because of all the running people!

So at 3:30 I said bye to Sam, watched a film and ate my weight in biccies with Fi, and then bussed back to Heidelberg (an hour late, thanks Mr Bus).

Finally this week! I'm sure you'll all be very glad to know that I actually made it to all my lessons successfully this week!! Yippea! Sadly it now means I can no longer use the "ohhh but I'm an Erasmus student" excuse, which had been so handy up until now...

My last adventure of the last couple of weeks was on Thursday. My flatmate Melli kindly lent me her bike for the weekend as she was at home and I was craving going cycling because EVERYONE in Heidelberg cycles and I was getting jealous... So I got back from my lesson on Thursday, had my lunch and had planned to go swimming which went out the window, so instead I thought I'd go for a little bike ride, maybe to the old town. 3 1/2 hours later I finally arrived back at the flat having (accidentally) cycled 17km to a cute little village called Neckargemund. It was so sunny and there were very beautiful views on the way, but I hadn't realised just how far away it was! Walking the next day wasn't exactly einfach... but it was worth it for the views of the river and mountains in the sun.

Neckargemund :)

Now you are completely up to date on my life from the last couple of weeks!

I shall update again soon when more has happened :)

Bis bald!

Year Abroad - Heidelberg Part 1

A summary of what I have done so far:

- spent 2 days in a car travelling through 5 countries
- enrolled at the uni
- moved into German halls
- explored Heidelberg
- hiked to Königstuhl
- attended Orientation week (which was awful!)
- met lots of lovely (mainly English) people
- found out Heidelberg does actually have nightlife
- experienced a wine festival and parade!
- spoke German. A bit.
- made it through my first day of lessons, but not the 2nd

So on Tuesday 1st October, after months and months of planning, Dad and I finally left good old Hampshire for our 2 day road trip to Heidelberg, Germany. After only a couple of minor glitches (some spilled coffee and ending up in the disabled lane) we made it to Maastricht in the Netherlands, via France and Belgium.

Evening sun in Maastricht

Sesselbahn

In Maastricht we had a quick look around the tourist sights, grabbed some dinner - Dad had the regional dish "Zoervleis" - and headed back to the hotel to rest before another whole day of driving!

Eating lunch looking at the Rhine Valley

After and couple of hours of driving the next day we arrived in the beautiful town of Boppard, in the Rhine valley. Feeling adventurous we decided to go up the Sesselbahn (chair lift) to the top of a hill overlooking Boppard and the "Bendiest bend on the Rhine". The view was spectacular, and we ate lunch (Wurst - what else?!) sitting right on the edge taking it all in. From Boppard it was only an hour and a half to our final destination, Heidelberg. Coming in to Heidelberg by car doesn't allow for the best first impressions: you have to drivethrough the industrial town of Mannheim and the suburb of Eppelheim. When you finally reach the town, however, with the view of the rolling hills, the river Neckar and the Shloss nestled in the mountain, you realise just how impressive Heidelberg really is.

Heidelberg's Altstadt 

We spent the next day doing all the tourist things Heidelberg has to offer: exploring the old town, going ton the funicular up to the castle and hiking up the Burg to Königstuhl. Although it was very cold, the sun was shining, turning Heidelberg's Altstadt into to some sort of fairytale town.

Heidelberger Schloss

Friday was a day of stress, und ich habe viel deutsch gesprochen. I had to collect my key for halls, eroll at the uni, make an appointment at the bank and attempt to sort out my phone. All was going swimmingly (aside from finding out my phone is very much locked to England) until we went to check out my room and flat. My flatmates have already lived there for 2 years so when we first walked in it felt like I had just broken in to someone's home! Then it turned out that they had given me the wrong key so I could only get in to my flatmate's room. I finally got it all sorted with my own room and key and successfully moved in all my things on Sunday.
After Dad left I had a slight panic but luckily some English girls decided to go for coffee, so I tagged along and found out how much of a life saver it is to have people in the same situation as you!

The following week was full of talks on enrolling, getting accommodation, and generally lots of things we had all already done! The end of the week was a little better - we went to a ganz cheesy club after not getting in to a seemingly empty bar because there were "too many of us".

On Saturday we spent most of the day in Ikea and H&M buying all the random things we needed (or didn't need) for our rooms.

Pfalz Forest

Sunday was trip day, so cue a very early start to get on a coach and travel to the Pfalz forest. We climbed up to the top of a hill with an amazing view over the mountains and forest, and had a tour around a castle which had once imprisoned Richard the Lionheart (for a whole 3 weeks!).

Gluhwein!

After jumping back on to our coach, we drove through the wine region, along the Weinstraße to the town of Neustadt an der Weinstraße. Here they had a wine festival (picture a beer festival but with wine) and we had a cup of Gluhwein to warm us up - although we were the only ones, all the hardcore Germans were drinking pints of wine! At 2pm the longest parade ever (or so it seemed) started, and for an hour we were entertained by the random floats, old men on bikes, and endless marching bands.

We gave up after float number 50 (of 120!!!) and went back to the festival for more Gluhwein. The day endedd with a tour around a vineyard (by an old man with a very strong accent) and a wine tasting. All in all a fab weekend!

So now it's Tuesday and I have survived a French lesson (ish) and a lecture in English, and attempted to attend two lectures which don't start until next week! Hence a very long day sat drinking Kakao in the Mensa!

I shall report back with more reports of my deutsch adventure soon :) Bis bald xxx

Rome in 3 days

How to do Rome in 3 days:

Day 1 - Arrive in Rome, jump on a bus to the main station, find your Hotel down one of the many many side streets in 30 degree heat and get exploring! 

We started off with a wander into the centre of the town for dinner with some sights on the way: 

- the Piazza della Republica 

- San Carlo Quattro Fonanta

- Quirinale

- Fontane Trevi

and Tempio Adriano

Piazza della Republica

Once in the centre of the city, in among all the tiny alleyways, we decided to try and find some dinner. In Rome, as with many other European cities, as soon as you look mildly interested in eating in a restaurant, you will get absolutely bombarded with menus and people trying to sit you down. As I was looking for somewhere offering gluten free food, (in Italy - Ha!) it worked as a pretty good deterrent to get rid of all the restaurant people! It went something like this:
Them: "Ahhh table for two?!" (Imagine the Italian accent and menus being shoved in your face)
Us: "Gluten free?"
Them: "Err no sorry!"
And then they'd move on. Sweet!

The only problem was, as soon as someone said "Yes we do have GF" I got so excited that we just had to eat there! Luckily it was a nice restaurant and I had some lush GF carbonara :D

Fontana di Trevi

Day 2 - Grab yourself a cheap cappuccino and croissant (or just a cappuccino if you're me!), head to the station to attempt to buy your next train ticket and fail, and then head out to see some more sights!
- Santa Maria Maggiore
- St. Pietro in Vincoli
- Colosseum
- Arco di Constantino
- Palatino/Roman Forum

Tiny piece of advice if you are thinking of visiting the Colosseum, Palatino and Roman Forum - book a ticket for all of them in advance! We joined a short queue, which lasted about 10-20 minutes and watched all the poor innocent people queueing for hours and hours who hadn't booked a ticket.

Visiting the ruins was definitely worth it. All the things you learned about in primary school about the Romans suddenly comes to life and you can picture exactly how they would have spent their lives.
Two slightly embarrassing tourist errors we made whilst visiting the Palatino and Roman Forum. Whilst we were walking around the old Palatino on the top of the hill, with a view of most of Rome, I saw a "big ruined building" through some trees and made the mistake of asking what it was... turns out it was the Colosseum. Akward.
Another mistake was searching for ages for the Roman Forum, following signs which were taking us back on ourselves and places we'd been before. After a good half and hour (possibly an hour...) we realised that all that time we had been standing in the Roman Forum. Oops.

In amongst our extreme touristing we managed to fit in some real Italian gelato (very overpriced but YUM!) to keep us refreshed and to stave off hungry. On the way back to the hotel we went via:
- the courtyard of Campideglio
- Ara Coeli steps
- Monumento a Victoria Emanuele

I'd highly recommend trekking up the millions of steps of the Ara Coeli because the view you get of Rome at the top can't really be beaten!

Hiking the steps of the Ara Coeli

Roma

Day 3 - Book your Vatican tickets in advance, queue for 10 minutes instead of 4 hours, and some culture!

One of the hottest days so far! We headed over to the Vatican City for some pretty intense culture. Although it was really cool to have a look round, it was mostly a massive art museum... so it didn't take all that long for Sam and I to get a bit bored of looking at vases and paintings by people we had never heard of! The Sistine Chapel was very cool though, with the guards violently shushing every 20 minutes or so!
Now I wont lie to you, we definitely thought that St Peter's Square and Basilica were part of the Vatican City, as in included in your ticket. How wrong we were! At the end of the walk through the Museums we were a bit disappointed - the square is what we came to see really, aside from the Sistine Chapel. In case anyone else ends up confused like we did, you actually have to walk around the City walls in order to get to the square, but it's so cool!

St Peter's Square and Basilica

After the Vatican we decided to walk back to our hotel across Rome, catching some more sights on the way. We grabbed some (very expensive) lunch and followed the river towards the Palace, stopping to look at a little riverside market and pick up some pretty paintings of Rome to take with us. After another sneaky gelato stop to keep us going (coconut ice cream = best thing ever) we visited the Pantheon, which mysteriously has a huge circular hole in the roof.

By this point I was exhausted and had a headache so we visited our last sight of the day, the Spanish Steps (which we just sat on because we were too tired to climb them!). We decided to take the lazy option and get the metro back to our hostel for the last night of our Rome experience. 

Spanish steps

Berlin Trip 2013 - Day 2

This morning was a little more productive than yesterday, in that we were up and out by 9:45 instead of spending 45 mins eating an insane amount of buffet breakfast like yesterday!
We started off the day by jumping on the S-bahn and heading to the DDR Museum to find out about daily life in the socialist East Germany (1949-1989). As German students we already knew everything there was to possibly know about the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) but this museum is such a fun, hands on way to see how normal people lived that it really isn't worth missing! With our great railcards we even got a reduced ticket price, so there was not excuse not to go.

Wandering round the museum you can pretend to to be a Party Leader as modelled by my dear friend Rachel, be interrogated by a (black cut out) Stasi officer like Nick, and have a rest in the DDR style flat.

After visiting the DDR Museum we were all pretty peckish so went on a hunt for the traditional Currywurst (essentially a Bratwurst sausage with ketchup or curry sauce and curry powder on top. It sounds disgusting but I can promise you it's delicious.

Yum.

We then headed over to the Brandenburger Tor again, this time to meet out tour guide for our free walking tour, something we would really recommend doing! The tour lasts 3 hours which sounds like a long time, but our tour guide was great so despite the constant drizzle and occasional torrential rain the time went very fast! We visited a lot of the famous attractions of Berlin: the cathedral, the university, and the old Stasi headquarters. The tour guide also gave us lots of great ideas for places we could visit during the rest of the week, like going to the top of the cathedral and inside the Konzerthaus. All in all a fab day! 

Berlin Cathedral 

Berlin Trip 2013 - Day 1

So I'm abroad again! This time on a trip to Berlin with the Bristol Uni German Society - which I'm vice-president of, just saying - and so far on Day 2 it's going brilliantly!
After viel Stress of organising the trip (people dropping out, flights changing price suddenly etc) we have finally made it here, and we are staying in the nicest hostel possibly on earth. It can only just still be described as a hostel (the bunk beds) as the restaurant, bar, pool and general atmosphere is definitely hotel. It was even rated as 2nd in the Guardian's Top 10 Luxury Hostels in Europe! I shall do a separate blog reviewing the hostel. For now though, back to the trip!
Despite a bit of a stressful evening on my part - delayed train back to Bristol Monday morning, cash machine eating my card in the afternoon - we managed to get everyone (who turned up...) on the right flight at the right time! On arrival at Berlin Shoenefeld we all bought our Welcome to Berlin travelcards, which for €36,50 gets you unlimited travel in and around Berlin and so many discounts everywhere! Definitely get this if you are ever in Berlin for a week.

We then successfully herded everyone onto 2 trains to Warschauer Platz where our super snazzy hostel was situated. After a cosy night in and an insanely giant buffet breakfast the next day, we were ready to hit Berlin!
Starting with mastering the epic U/S-bahn system of Berlin, we managed to navigate our way to the infamous Brandenburger Tor, once the symbol of the German Empire, then the gate dividing East and West Europe, now a top tourist attraction - also strangely apparently a popular hangout for men dressed as Mickey Mouse, Darth Vadar etc.

The Brandenburger Tor... and Darth Vadar

After a quick photo stop we still had an hour and a half until meeting everyone for our tour of the Reichstag, the German parliament building. So we decided to stroll up to the gold Victory Collum. *WARNING* do not be fooled! It is NOT a stroll away, actually a 3 day hike (nearly). In the rain it was, as some might say, "totes not worth it". Although if you have a speedy means of transport it is a rather nice photo opportunity.
We then zipped back to the Reichstag so fast in our panic that we were early for our tour. Luckily they let us in anyway. Our ticket (we found out...) was just to go up the 'dome' on top of the building, but really this is the most exciting bit (no offence Angela). On the way in to the dome we were given an audio tour, which gave us a low down on all the sites we were seeing through the huge glass panels with a history of each place. As a free trip it was the best way to see the city from above, deffo choose this over the TV Tower (Fernsehturm) which is frankly over-rated!

From the Reichstag we walked to the Holocaust memorial, which is something everyone must see if they are visiting Berlin. The memorial itself is hard to explain, and is really something which must be experienced in person in order to fully understand the impact that it has on you. The museum below the memorial is very moving, with extracts from letters of those affected by the Holocaust. Everyone must go there, but leave an hour and half to look round and 2 hours to recover from the emotion of it all.
To try and recover from the museum experience we wandered down to Potsdamer Platz for a spot of shopping. After a BubbleTee (YUM) and stocking up on -,59€ Milka bars, we were ready to head back to the hostel and chill ready for the next day of extreme walking!