Maggie in Rotterdam: Berlin

I had a couple of rocky weeks in between my trip to Spain and my weekend in Berlin that involved falling off my bike skidding on tram tracks in the rain and banging up my hand, after just getting over a fierce week-long cold that was probably the result of not sleeping or eating well while travelling. Luckily my trip to Berlin was of a much more relaxed nature, since I was visiting my mom's good friend and college roommate Miriam and her daughter Pauline and staying in their flat. I was glad to be going somewhere where I knew someone, especially someone close to my mom, and it kind of felt a bit like going home, to a real house with a mom and getting to eat meals with a family and hang around chatting in a living room.

It was a very different way of travelling than what I'd done before and I think I consequently saw a very different Berlin than I would have if I had been alone and staying in a youth hostel. The majority of things I saw and did there were historical or cultural, especially because I was there for The Long Night of Museums, when all the museums in Berlin stay open until 2am and have free entry if you get a 12 euro ticket. We went to ten museums in one night! The Bauhaus Archive, The Schwules Museum (LGBT art), The GDR Museum, the National Gallery, a museum about the Stasi in Germany, the German Historical Museum, the Currywurst Museum, a museum about the Trabi, the typical East Berlin car, and Checkpoint Charlie. I learned a great deal about the GDR (German Democratic Republic, East Germany and East Berlin under Soviet rule) and what life was like in Germany during the Cold War before the wall came down. Miriam also had loads of information about the layout of the city, where the wall was and how it affected city planning and how it changed when it was removed. She had lived in Berlin when the wall was up and thus was a really interesting person to talk to about how much Berlin has grown and changed, and I was glad to have that perspective as I visited the city. I was a bit disappointed to miss being able to visit with James, my good friend from New York, who was there one week after I was. I would have liked to see the weird, new, youthful Berlin that I heard about from my friend Bea who has lived there, but it is a difficult city to stumble upon these things as it is so spread out, and my weekend was already full of museums and history. It seems like Berlin takes more time than a long weekend, and I would like to go back with Bea or James to see the parts I may have missed.

I was glad to get to spend time with Miriam and talk about familiar things like my mom and brother and New York, and to get to know her daughter Pauline a bit better since she's now 16 and super smart and way cool. I ate some of the best cake in my life, and walked through some really amazing parks with cutting-edge playgrounds (very German) and cooked my favorite recipe, lentils stewed in red wine and tomatoes for a lovely dinner one night. I was also ecstatic about the quality and quanity of Turkish food in Berlin.

All in all I think I've only just begun to get to know the sprawling, growing, constantly changing city that is Berlin and I was grateful not only to visit the city but also to visit some familiar faces and be welcome in Miriam's home. It was a relief to not push myself to do too much or have to plan things myself after a week in Spain, and I took advantage of having a restful weekend away from Rotterdam.

I didn't take nearly as many photos as I usually do when travelling alone, but here are some of the sights I saw: