Berlin, Germany

The train from Amsterdam to Berlin took a little over six hours heading straight east. Once we arrived, the the two of us + Jesse and Luigi (eventually) found the right metro line to take us to our home for the next three nights, the Sunflower Hostel. We’ve found that hostels are fun for the social feel but we always opt for private rooms – essentially serves as a lower cost hotel room. The Sunflower Hostel is on the east side of Berlin in a neighborhood called Friedrichshain. Very cool, hip, up and coming part of the city with a lot of great cheap food and bars. The world famous Berghain techno club was a stone’s throw away (it was unfortunately closed during the week when we were there) and about a 10 minute walk to the East Side Gallery, the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall.

A few days prior Ian saw on Instagram that our old friend from UC Berkeley, Matt, happened to be in Berlin and was due to leave the day after we arrived. He swung by the Sunflower and we snagged some good eats and called it a relatively early night before a lot of sightseeing the next day.

The next day we covered some serious ground starting with the East Side Gallery. Then after swinging by a Turkish market in the Kruezberg neighborhood (Berlin has a huge Turkish population), we headed to the center of the city to check out A LOT of sites including Brandenburg Gate (18th-century neoclassic monument near the capital building and international embassies), the Holocaust Memorial, site of Hitler’s bunker (now a parking lot), Checkpoint Charlie (famous East/West Berlin border crossing), and the Topography of Terror (outdoor history museum). There is a lot of darkness in Berlin’s 20th century history and we appreciated that the city does so much to educate the public about its past. In the evening we bopped around Friedrichshain and ended up at an awesome wine bar, Noble Rot Weinbar, that featured some tasty German pinot noir before a nightcap cocktail nearby at Cafe-Bar Himmelreich.

**East Side Gallery on the Berlin Wall**

**Abby with her eyes on some Currywurst, a Berlin staple**

Good times at Noble Rot Weinbar (video clip)

On full day #2 the two of us jumpstarted the morning with a run to Treptower Park to explore the grounds of the Soviet War Memorial and it absolutely blew us away with its sheer size and scale. Following the run we rented bikes and rode over to Tempelhofer Field, a decommissioned airport in the southern part of the city which is now essentially a huge recreational park. Riding bikes along the old runways and stopping by the beer garden on site was a definite highlight of our time in Berlin. From there we rode across the city to meet back up with Jesse and Luigi at the Jewish Museum – one of the most interesting and unique museums we’ve ever been to. Bonus: admission was free.

That evening, because it was the last night with Jesse and Luigi, and because Berlin is the world capital of techno after all, we decided to have a proper night out. After grabbing a quick dinner and regrouping at the hostel, we went to a very cool bar called Madame Claude before trying our hand getting into the oldest techno club in East Berlin, Tresor, which occupies a former power plant. We were lucky enough to get in after seeing a good number of people getting turned away (tips for getting in: don’t go in a big group, don’t look drunk, and know who is performing that night). Photos aren’t allowed – they even put stickers on your phone camera – but it was incredibly memorable to say the least.