Rainy day in Berlin

This morning started out great because we were able to sleep all night!! yay!! We started out by having crepes, which comes in many different flavors. I had Nutella and Banana and Ryan had Baileys, yes the alcoholic beverage was a flavor. Then we went shopping a little and relaxed because it was a gloomy day.

Around 4 o'clock we went on a bike tour around Berlin and had an AWESOME time. Our tour leader is from Seattle so she spoke English the whole time and we saw many of the sites we haven't seen yet. It was a group of about 20 people and they were from all over the world. There were some students from Texas who are studying in Innsbruck, Austria, so we got their contact info so they can give us some tips on where to go when we are there. We also had a nice talk with a family from Holland. It was so great to answer questions they had about America and also here about Holland. They get about 25 days for work holiday and were surprised when we said we get about 1-2 weeks. The daughter who is about 19 is a fan of the TV show Gossip Girl and 90210 and thought that was what America was light, so she was a little disappointed when I told her America wasn't like those shows at all! They were also surprised when we told them our schools serve burgers, fries and pizza. The son, who is about 15, smiled really big when we said that because he was jealous.

Something interesting that we both found out is that in Berlin, everything is literally been torn down and rebuilt multiple times. So you think you are seeing something old, but really its not. Throughout all the power struggles, the new leaders would destroy anything that the previous leaders built and build something over it. Now, Berlin is trying to rebuild a lot of the old buildings, except they will be new...weird?

Ok I will hand the blog off to Ryan!

The memorial had a melancholy, gloomy feel to it. The overall feeling from walking among this memorial was a sad feeling of knowing what this represents. Many of the history in Germany is actually surrounded around war and other sad events. Alas, this is an example of a long history of war.

Fun Fact: When Hitler came into power, he randomly started taking down all the statues in the city in the parks and on tops of buildings. He wrapped them and had them sunk into the rivers. He didn't explain why, but they now know it was because he was preparing for the war he would start 3 years, he knew the city would be destroyed and wanted to save the statues.

A funny thing that happened at the Tiergarten (Bier Garden) was Allie ordered in German for the first time. Unfortunately, she needs a little practice. She attempted to order wiener schnitzel and ended up getting a beer with sprite and spezi ( a German drink with coca-cola and fanta).

Allie with her two drinks

Our delicious weiner schnitzel

Our tour leader drew this to explain the Berlin wall and where Charlie Checkpoint was located. Fun fact, it is called "Charlie" because it is one of the US army codes, Alpha, Beta and Charlie. The two other checkpoints are called Alpha and Beta.

The Memorial of the Murdered Jews - see the video below

Reichstag, the parliament house