Oh, Mondays! [especially those Monday's that happen to fall the morning after the Super Bowl]! Our train came into Prague at 10 pm last night from Berlin and then we immediately changed and headed to Legends, a sports bar at which we had reserved a table, to watch the Super Bowl.
What a great game, although I will admit that I was too tired to stay till the end. Berlin really took a lot out of us, but it is really an incredible city. While more modernized and westernized than Prague, there is still a great amount of history and plus, the people seemed to be very friendly. It actually was very refreshing yet strange at how apparent the differences were between Czechs and Germans. While in Germany for only a few hours, we began to realize how much we were already beginning to assimilate to Czech culture, or at least becomes accustomed to many social habits unique to the Czechs.
We left Prague on Friday morning at 6:30 am and go to Berlin around noon. As we are checking into the hostel (Circus- incredible hostel) we coincidentally stumble upon Rachel whose 21st birthday it was! Her and a couple of friends from her program were staying in the same hostel as us. What a small world. It was great though, because they had already been there for a few days so pretty much knew their way around. They took us to Museum Island where we explored 2 out of 3 of the gigantic museums (Altes and Pergamonmuseum). The public transportation system was on strike all day on Friday so we walked everywhere which was really nice. The exhibits were mainly Ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt and a little bit if Middle Eastern Art, which was my favorite. The Pergamonmuseum is like no other museum I have seen before. Rather than just have small pieces of pottery or paintings etc, the Pergamonmuseum is made up of huge monuments and altars that someone purchased.
I had asked one of the RA's "If there was one thing you could go see in Berlin, what would it be?" and she had told me that we have to go check out the Parliament building (Reischtag Dome). They allow people to walk on top of the roof while Parliament is in session so that when members of the Parliament look up they remember that the people are "always above them". The whole concept is kinda neat, but apparently everyone who visits Berlin wants to do that so we ended up bailing out of the line to get inside the building. Instead, we went to see the Brandenburg gate which is really incredible. It's enormous!
Friday night, in honor of Rachel's 21st birthday we went out for Indian food and then did another pub crawl. We're thinking about trying to do a pub crawl in every city we visit. We have already met so many awesome people from the two we have done. In fact, Tim, our new friend from Australia met up with us in Prague last night. The first night in the hostel we got back to our room around 2:30 and we still hadn't met our room mates yet. We were in an 8 person room, but there were only 4 of us girls. In the middle of the night, we are awoken by the four Australian guys that are sharing a room with us. After waking US up, they fell fast asleep SNORING (very loudly).
On Saturday we woke up early to get the day started. We switched into a 6 person room with two boys from Australia. It's really incredible how many people we met at the hostel. And I love having conversations with people our age from different countries and seeing how they view Americans and the rest of the world.
Finally, on Sunday we decided to check out one of the flea markets that Berlin is known for. It was walking distance from our hostel and the sun was finally shining again. There were a ton of people, tchotchkies, and brats. It was very "Berlinesque"...I cannot wait to go back to Berlin at some point and spend a longer amount of time there.
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