berlin, part one.

I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking when I decided to book a short trip to Berlin right before exams, but hey, you only live once, right?  The morning I left, I only got an hour and half of sleep.  I was planning on sleeping during my flight but my flight from Manchester kept getting delayed.  After 2 hours of delays, I finally arrived in Berlin around 3:30pm, taking the train and the U-Bahn to my hostel without much trouble.  The rest of my day was relatively chill, as I mainly unpacked and got settled in to the hostel.  I did get to go for dinner at an Italian restaurant called Incontri with a few girls I met at the hostel.

The next day was one of those days where I squeezed as much as I could into one day.  Surprisingly enough, I did manage to do everything I had planned for that day and I even squeezed in a little shopping too.  First off, I took the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn to see some of Berlin’s most famous sights - the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe!

Afterwards, I went back to Alexanderplatz to check out the Rotes Rathaus (city hall) and the Berliner Dom.  It’s such a pity that there was so much construction going on around city hall because it’s actually a really beautiful building.  I obviously did a little research before I left so I knew that some of my favourite stores were in the general area.  Of course I had to stop by my faves, Weekday and Acne.  It was quite cold out and I didn’t actually pack enough warm clothing for this trip (i.e. my Oxford Uni jumper, a crop top, and a thin T by AWang v-neck), so I bought a knit jumper at Weekday.  Perfect excuse for a little shopping, no?  I wasn’t actually planning on buying anything at Acne but how can I resist a sign that says ‘40% off’?  Pretty sure you can guess what happened next…  I ended up leaving with the ‘Zone’ tank top printed with a drawing by Daniel Silver.  I resisted shopping some more at Cos so I put up my mental blinders and went back to the hostel to drop off my new purchases.

I went back out to check out the East Side Gallery, which is a 1.3km-long section of the Berlin Wall.  The wall is home to 105 paintings done by artists from all ends of the earth.  There are some really amazing works and it was nice to see a little bit of colour in the particularly dreary weather that I had the opportunity of experiencing whilst I was in Berlin.

There are still are lot more photos from this day but I didn’t want to overload you guys with a billion photos so I split this day into two posts.  The continuation of this day will be up soon!