Framed: Berlin Highlights

I had an interesting time in Berlin. It was the last stop on our trip and by this point everyone was pretty tired and grumpy, which definitely put a damper on things. Despite the crabby moods, Chick-Fil-A cravings, and one nasty bout of vertigo I did love this city and tried hard to soak up as much as I could of its tragic past and promising future.

Berlin is also interesting because, like much of Eastern Europe and especially eastern Germany, it was almost completely destroyed during WWII. As a result, much of the city is fairly new construction or reconstruction. Berlin also has an incredible vibe! There are a ton of young people and internationals and it has a hip music and art scene. I also think a lot of what made me like the city so much was our incredible guide Jonna. She was kind of a stereotypical no-nonsense proper German lady but she had been a rebellious teen and had so many amazing stories about her world travels and being a young adult in Berlin after the wall came down. She was a true gem!

Here are some of my recommendations for must-see and must-eat adventures in Berlin:

Reichstag

I won’t go into all of the history of this building and the huge part it played in Germany’s history (it would take hours and several posts!) but I will say that climbing the Reichstag Dome is something that you absolutely have to do if you ever visit Berlin. It’s free but you have to make reservations before hand. The tour comes with a great audio guide explaining the history of the Reichstag and the major Berlin landmarks you can see from the top of the building. Great views!

"To the German people"

Brandenburg gate from the top of the Dome

Inside the Dome

Pergamon Museum

Berlin does NOT lack on the museum front. They have an entire museum island and a museum pass that gets you into over 60 different museum. Holy Cow! With company visits during the weekdays, I didn’t have much time to go to all of the museums I wanted to but I made a special effort to check out the Pergamon. The museum was built to house and is named after its main attraction, the Pergamon Alter. The altar was built in the city of Pergamon in the 2^nd century B.C. and features a gigantic frieze depicting classic scenes from Greek mythology. The altar was discovered by a German archeologist and the scenes were reconstructed after looking at pictures of the altar etched on coins found during the excavation in Peragmon, which is absolutely incredible! Like a giant jigsaw puzzle! The Pergamon also houses the Ishtar Gate, which was built under King Nebuchadnezzer’s Rule and is the 8^th gate to the inner city of Babylon. It is absolutely massive and a beautiful, vivid blue color. Experiencing something that colossal and picturing walking into the city of Babylon through those gates was breathtaking, intimidating, and overwhelming. This museum also came with a top notch audio guide! I spent 2 hours in three room and didn’t mind it at all. It was fascinating.

The smaller scale of the Pergamon Alter. The Frieze around the bottom wraps around the entire room.

A model of the city of Pergamon. The Altar is the white rectangle to the right of the large white space.

A close up of the frieze on the top and an artist rendering of what the complete frieze most likely looked like on the bottom

the Ishtar Gate

A model of what the gates looked like in all of their glory. The smaller outer gate is the one on display in the picture above. The gate behind it was too big for the museum. Does this remind anyone else of Daenerys conquering Slaver's Bay on Game of Thrones?

Topography of Terror

This is a free, open-air museum along one of the few remaining stretches of the Berlin wall. It’s located in front of where the Gestapo and SS buildings stood and takes you through the heinous crimes of those institutions and goes into depth about the political and social situations that allowed a man like Hitler to gain absolute power. I highly recommend spending and hour or two at the Topography of Terror to gain a better sense of what Berlin went through and how exactly dictatorships are born and spread.

Enough with the heavy and educational and onto the food and shopping!

Beer and Dancing

When in Germany (and Czech Republic and Poland) one must drink beer and lots of it! German beer is so wonderful and drinking it outside in a garden by a lake makes it taste even better! I enjoyed a lemon shandy at the Tiergarten Biergaten one sunny afternoon. The whole group also enjoyed a few beers at Berlin’s famous dance hall, Clärchens Ballhaus. After beers at the dance hall, Jonna took us to an outdoor swing dance party by the river where we drank lemonade in the grass and watched so pretty awesome swing dancers as the sun set over Berlin. It was pretty special and definitely one of those experiences you only have when you’re hanging out with locals.

Grub

I think I only ate German food once the whole time we were in Berlin. It’s such an international city so I tried as many different types of foods as I could. We had amazing Thai food and delicious Italian. I also tried Turkish and Armenian food for the first time. Both of which were on point! I was not a fan of Berlin’s famous street food- currywurst. It’s a light colored sausage covered in a generous amount of ketchup and curry powder. Yep, it was as weird as it sounds! I couldn’t handle that volume of ketchup. Ick!

One of my favorite shopping experience was Fassdender andRausch chocolatiers. I spent a good hour in there and over half of my shopping budget for the trip (oops!). The chocolates were melt in your mouth delicious and they had chocolate sculptures of just about anything you could imagine. I was in heaven and so were all of my family members who enjoyed edible souvenirs!

A chocolate version of the Brandenburg gates

That about does it for Berlin. There are a million and five things to do in this city and I didn’t write about everything but I will leave you with a few more photos. Enjoy!