Berlin!

A late, but needed "summary" of my week in Berlin:
Once again, sorry, but it's better late than never...

Although it has only been two weeks, it feels as though I was there nearly a lifetime ago...
Berlin! An amazing city with so much to offer, see and do.
We did so much in one week, and yet, I feel as though I barely saw Berlin. We stayed in the Transit-Loft Hotel in East Berlin, only an 8-minute S-Bahn ride away from the ever famous Alexanderplatz.
We went through museum after museum, tour after tour. My favorite museums would have to be the Jewish Museum, special not only because of the important and interesting history discussed, but also because the building itself is a piece of art. My other favorite was the Pergamon Museum, which housed amazing Greek and Babylonian history. The Museum itself was set up in two parts: myth and fact. At the end it even had the Gate of Ishtar! It was amazing!

(The First picture is a section of the east side of the Berlin wall. The second is a picture of some of the parliament buildings)
We had a tour of the Bundestag one day, where there was unfortunately no meeting that particular day. It's interesting to see how similar, and also different, the German system is to our own!
Unfortunately, to my dismay, we spent Friday, October 3rd (Der Tag der Deutschen Einheit...German reunifiaction day) in Potsdam! Potsdam happens to be a lovely place, but to be in Berlin! on Reunification Day! was exactly the opportunity I was excited about. We got back late in the evening, and found, luckily, that people continued to celebrate into the night. (I know, big surprise)
We got to the city center around 10:00pm and found hundreds of people singing, dancing and celebrating in the street. We were also frighteningly confronted with large numbers of policemen escorting drunken crowds out of sight. We retreated into a building with my friend Eddie, who knows some "authentic" Berliners and found an amazing building decorated with grafiti-art, a club/bar on one floor, and an amazingly unique art gallery upstairs.

We did the touristy things, we saw the touristy sights, and I am positive that I barely saw any of Berlin. We wanted to get to the otherside of Berlin one evening, so we had to take the S-Bahn, get off and hop on a bus, get on the U-Bahn, and then walk a few blocks. I'm not sure I could master that system in a year!

In the end, I discovered that I love Berlin!...but I love coming home to Freiburg. Big cities are amazing because they have so much to offer, but a small city like Frieburg is a place I will always feel safe and at home in. People in Berlin were pushier, less friendly, and as soon as they discovered I spoke English, were too quick to give up on speaking German. Nearly everyone spoke English, and I found myself straying too much from speaking German simply because it was easier to speak English.
I would love to go back to Berlin again, in a smaller group (a little less obvious and touristy) and discover more, but for now I am content to enjoy the amazing, and perfectly sized place in which I currently reside: Freiburg.