This past weekend, my friends (Hayley and Hannah) and I took a weekend trip to Berlin! It was our first trip by ourselves and I think it went pretty darn awesome. :) We flew into Berlin Thursday night and then took the bus and underground metro from the airport to our hostel. Thank the lord there was a man who spoke English on the bus with us that could tell we were struggling. Our hostel just so happened to be by the bar that he was going to so he took us to our hostel, helping us figure out the metro on the way. Phew! (I had read which bus to take to our hostel before we left for the trip, but it was definitely not right..lol).

Friday we started the day early and walked all day long. We say monuments and memorials like The Brandenberg Gate (the things I am standing in front of in this cover picture), The Holocaust Memorial, Potsdamer Platz, and Topography of Terror (a museum documenting all of the Nazi crimes from 1933-1945). The Topography of Terror was really sad. It showed lots of pictures and documents that the victims of the Holocaust had to endure and the horrible things the Nazis did during that time. We then worked our way over to the East Side Gallery (my favorite part of the trip). It is the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin wall (which used to separate East and West Berlin). It has crazy awesome graffiti and artwork painted on it, and lots of quotes by the artists too. Many were written multiple times in different languages so everyone could understand them.

Two of my favorite quotes from the wall: "Many small people in many small places do many small things that can alter the face of the world" and "I painted over the wall of shame so freedom is ashamed no more. Inferno ruled too many years, until the people chose the light. I put my faith in you Berlin, and give to you my colors bright"

After the wall we had some Schnitzel for lunch and then went and saw the World Clock tower and had a glance at the beautiful Berlin Cathedral. We hung out downtown for a while and then headed back to our hostel, which had a lounge for everyone to hang out in. We met people from all over the world and had some really interesting conversations with them, even learning words in Portuguese and Polish!!

Saturday, after breakfast at the hostel (which mainly was composed of toast with nutella and strawberry jelly on it) we headed to the Sachenhausen Concentration camp. The people in this camp were Jewish people and also political rebels of Hitler were brought here too. I'm really glad we saw it because it was super interesting, but also really sad. Lots of the buildings were not there anymore, but you could see where the old buildings used to be. I learned a lot and afterward, I hated the Nazis even more.

Saturday night we walked downtown, bought some souvenirs, and had a dinner of currywerst and french fries (which was delicious.) Then we topped that off by getting some Belgium chocoloate ice cream, a very healthy night for us. Then we headed back to the hostel, hung out, and went to bed so we could wake up at 4 am to leave for the airport!

Overall, I had a great weekend of adventures and histroy, and a fun time in our hostel.