This last weekend the group took a weekend trip to Berlin. We took a bus ride that I didn't really time, but I managed to make it through Der Fliegende Holländer and Madama Butterfly with time to spare before we arrived so i'm going to guess it was about 6 or so hours. We arrived at our hostel situated on the edge of Kreuzberg (not the sketch part, the better part down the street from Potsdamer Platz). I went into the hostel, dropped my stuff off, called Emily and went straight to get me a giant plate of currywurst.
After eating by the Brandenburger Tor, Emily and I went for a walk around the Holocaust Memorial and Friedrichstrasse seeing as how she will be leaving Germany in a couple weeks and wanted to revisit a few places. Afterwards we met up with Matt and headed towards Checkpoint Charlie to Erin and Niko's new apartment stopping by an outdoor book sale across the street from Humboldt where I snagged myself a DDR children's book. We sat around Erin and Niko's place drinking wine and champagne with them, Lina from Dusseldorf, and their new pet turtle Spencer. We then went out for cocktails and then ended up at some burger place built by the gods. Matt and I ended up leaving and had a long walk back home in the rain and ended up chilling in the lobby of the hostel for some time.
The next day I slept in until 13.30 and went for a long bookstore hunt with Matt and then met up with Emily. We went to her place in Zehlendorf where her host mom once again made the best damn pizza i've ever had. We couldn't stay long because we had an opera we had to get to.
When we arrived at the opera house I hung outside for a little bit just to people watch. I saw a tall slender man wearing a tuxedo with tails and his date wearing a backless floor-length red gown and a complicated looking bun. They were both smoking cigarettes with long black cigarette-holders. It was a perfect image and I wish I could have gotten a picture. It was interesting to see how everyone was dressed. It ranged from Tuxedo's and gowns to jeans and sneakers. Nobody really minded what the other was wearing, it was kind of a dress-how-you-feel kind of atmosphere. Everyone was there just to have a great time at the opera. The last few weeks I had been feeling absolutely miserable with the idea of my own personal, "impending doom." AKA the reality that i'm going to have to leave Germany and go back to Utah very soon. I got a knot in my stomach every time I thought about it, but for those few hours as I sat there watching La Traviata, the knot loosened and my entire body surrendered itself to my greatest weakness: a good opera. Sounds lame, I know... but it is true. The super titles were all in German and I really didn't find it a problem understanding everything, however when the plot would twist naturally the singing got faster which means that the super titles went faster resulting in my ultimate confusion. I found myself thinking, "The hell? They were just in love and now they hate each other? WAIT A MINUTE WHO JUST DIED? WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!" Eventually Emily and I decided to just kick back and enjoy the music. After the opera we grabbed some beer and chilled in the hostel with a bunch of other people until the wee hours of the morning and we all went to bed.
The next day I went out with Lyndsey and Claire to the Jewish Museum. The architecture of the building was in a zig-zag formation with the hallways slightly slanting up or down creating a Willy Wonka effect where people at the end of the hallway would seem tiny while others seemed like giants. After the museum we went to an Easter Carnival in Alexanderplatz and ate some good old fashioned Bratwurst. Lyndsey and I then went into the Berliner Dom where we were greeted with a rehearsal performance of Handel's Messiah. It was ethereal music in a breath-taking building and a place I could have spent all day in. We went to the top of the Dom for an awesome view of Berlin and then down down down into the crypts where the minivan-sized coffins of who knows how many famous dead royals are placed. It was a bit shocking to see all of the coffins for dead royal babies... incest really doesn't pay, eh?
We then left for the hostel and I gave Lyndsey a foot massage in payment for making her go all the way up to the Dome and then down in the Crypts. My preconception that I was awful at foot massages was once again proven true. But hey... I tried.
Then we went to dinner at some "mexican" restaurant and then went back to the hostel for a relaxed night before we left the next morning.
Overall Berlin 3.0 was a fantastic trip that crossed off some things on my bucket list. The next to be crossed off is, "travel to some random country you know nothing about." That will be crossed off on the 19th when I head off to Estonia. Excitement Excitement.
