Hey everyone,

I first want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has been keeping up with this incredibly sporadic blog – so many of you have reached out to me saying that you’re loving what I post, and that means a lot to me.

With that, let’s get into this week’s blog post – my trip to Berlin! I’m sorry this is a day late – I needed yesterday to recover from the long coach ride, plus I needed to edit the hundreds of photographs that I took (I’m still not done, but that’s another issue…). Fair warning, this blog post is much longer than normal, but I hope you all enjoy 🙂

I’m going to tackle this day by day, so let’s start with…

THURSDAY:

As most people know by now, we didn’t fly to Berlin. Our coach left Oxford at 5:30 PM, stopped in London at 7:30 PM to pick up more students, and we reached the Port of Dover at 9:45 PM so we could catch, what we presumed, was a 10:30 PM ferry to Port of Calais in France. Sounds like we were making decent time, right? NOPE. The second we got to customs, they informed us that due to bad fog that day, THREE separate ferries had been massively delayed, so we were pushed back to take the ferry at 12:50 AM. I read part of my book (The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri – would HIGHLY recommend) and played Cards Against Humanity with some of the other students on the coach to kill time, and we eventually made our way onto the ferry just before 1 AM Friday morning.

FRIDAY:

We docked in Calais about an hour and a half later before we all got back on the coach and I immediately fell asleep, waking up about 6 hours later and we were apparently somewhere in Belgium. We ended up reaching Berlin around 3 PM local time (Berlin is an hour ahead of Oxford time). We checked into the hostel, freshened up a bit, and then immediately went out to explore! Our first stop was the Brandenburg Gate. The sun was setting just behind the gate and it looked incredible.

We then took the underground to the Reischtag, or the Parliament. We unfortunately couldn’t go up the famous glass dome because we didn’t realize you have to book tickets a good week in advance, but the architecture of the building itself is beautiful.

We then made our way back to the hostel and got ready for the pub crawl! The pub crawl was awesome – for 12 euros, we got free entry into three bars and a club, and with drink deals at each place. It was a great first look into Berlin’s incredible nightlife scene. I ended up back at the hostel at around 3 AM, which was surprisingly early for Berlin nightlife (the club we went to, Matrix, is open until 7 AM!)

SATURDAY:

Saturday was easily the most enjoyable day for me. Although it was freezing, the sky was blue and it was sunny (the only day where it didn’t rain at all…), so I decided to go on an “alternative” walking tour of Berlin. For all my friends who are planning on visiting Berlin soon, I would highly recommend this alternative tour. Instead of going to all of the typical touristy sites, this walking tour took us around Berlin’s arts/graffiti scene and through several alternative communities around the city. Our tour guide was a hilarious Scottish artist named Cami. He showed us various works of graffiti in the neighborhoods of Alexanderplatz and showed us alternative artists’ communities in Kreutzberg (I think I’m spelling that right…) before we ended up in Yaam (it stands for Young African Art Market) which is a cozy reggae community on the edge of the river (they’re actually on the beach, which was obviously closed because it’s still winter and it’s freezing). It’s a colorful little communal space, and everyone was so friendly and welcoming.

Here’s a few pictures…

Following the end of the walking tour, I made my way over to the East Side Gallery, which was just down the street from Yaam. It was my first time seeing the Berlin Wall in person, and it was honestly quite unbelievable in the moment. The wall is absolutely beautiful now – bright and colorful and covered in artwork. It was somewhat hard to believe that less than thirty years ago, this wall was a sign of sheer terror and control.

After the East Side Gallery, I made my way over to Gendarmenmarkt, a public square in Berlin that is the home of the Konzerthouse.

After Gendarmenmarkt, I made my way back to Alexanderplatz for a quick dinner before heading back to the hostel for a few hours to relax. That night, a group of friends and I decided to go out to a jazz bar. We unfortunately showed up pretty late – only for the last thirty minutes of the set – but the music was incredible! (I really wish Oxford had a good jazz bar – but I digress). After the jazz bar, we ended up at a bar that Cami had recommended earlier called Eschloraque, which was easily one of the coolest bars I have ever been to. It was nestled in the back of a graffiti-covered alleyway and you wouldn’t have known it was a bar from the outside, especially since you had to ring a doorbell to be let into the bar in the first place. We spent a few hours there enjoying drinks and the live DJ before making our way back to the hostel for the night.

SUNDAY:

When I woke up Sunday morning, it was already pouring. Not wanting to even attempt to do any outdoor exploring, I decided to head over to Museuminsel (Museum Island). A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, Museum Island is the home of five art museums. I spent the whole day exploring three of the museums – the Alte Nationagalerie, the Neues Museum, and the Altes Museum. I tried to get into the Pergamon, but the queue was wayyy too long.

(I took a lot of pictures of the art, but I’m not going to post them here. See P.S. at the bottom of the post…)

After a full day of museums, I was pretty exhausted and my left foot was killing me, but still wanted to go out for my last night in Berlin. My friends and I ended up going back to the jazz bar we had gone to the night before and ended up seeing the full set. We ended up at another smaller bar soon afterwards and ended up calling it an early night, heading back to the hostel just after midnight.

MONDAY:

We checked out of the hostel at 10 AM, but we weren’t leaving Berlin until 5:30 PM, so we had one full day left to explore. My foot at this point wasn’t in the best shape, but I still wanted to make the most of my last day. My first stop was the Holocaust Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and it was very starkly beautiful.

After the Memorial, I made my way over to the Berliner Dom, or the Berlin Cathedral Church, which was back over on Museum Island.

Despite my foot still killing me, I climbed the nearly 300 steps to the dome, which provided a panoramic view of the city. The view was sadly quite dark and cloudy, but still absolutely stunning:

From the top, I happened to notice that there was no line to get into the Pergamon Museum, unlike the day before, so after slowly (and painfully) climbing back down the stairs, I walked over the Pergamon and spent about an hour wandering through the Pergamon’s exhibits. At this point, I was in a lot of pain, so I grabbed a quick lunch and made my way back to the hostel, where I relaxed for a few hours before heading back onto the coach for the 17+ hour journey back to Oxford. The journey back seemed to go a lot faster than the journey out to Berlin – perhaps because I was more used to it?

I also got to see a beautiful sunrise on the water as we were sailing from Calais to Dover:

And so here I am, back in Oxford with a most-likely-sprained ankle, hundreds of pictures to edit, and a newfound love for the city of Berlin. Berlin has a very rich and beautiful history, but it also has a very dark history underneath it, and it was fascinating to get to see both sides of that history in just a few short days.

What are my plans for the next month? You’ll have to keep reading my blog to find out 😉

Much love,

Tasha

PS: In regards to photographs: I took several hundred pictures, and it’s impossible to post them all here, so all the pictures will be posted to my main Facebook page and to my professional photography page! Keep an eye out 🙂