Berlin and Paris are probably two of the most alike and opposite cities at the same time. After several short trips we took two longer trips to Berlin for five days and then to Paris for five days. I have been to both of these cities before and enjoyed them both as much if not more than I did the first time. Both of these cities are full of history and celebrate art, beauty, and expression of thought. Berlin is known for its crazy and spontaneous activity happening everywhere at all times. We were going out one night and passed by the U bahn station that was filled with people dancing, drinking, and singing. We were heading back to the hostel that night and passed by the same station that was still partying the night away. In Paris you can walk on the Champs Elysee and find groups of dancers break dancing in unison or go to the steps of Sacre Coeur and listen to the beautiful voices of various performers. In both of these cities you will have incredible and unique experiences and see art and beauty in forms like you never have before.
In Berlin, we were lucky enough to have a similar hostel experience to that of Budapest. We walk into the hostel at 10am after traveling for 15 hours from Bruge on 5 different sketchy trains spending three hours from 1am to 4am in some random city in Germany, and we are greeted with the hilarious and quirky Julian. We had told the hostel that one of us would be arriving the night before around midnight. This did not work out as the train that I was going to catch was full but we were unable to notify the hostel of this. So Julian at 10am tells us how he didn't get to sleep last night because of our tardiness and how he thought I was lost wandering around Berlin somewhere and that we should have contacted them somehow. Let's just say, we weren't off to the greatest start at Jetpak Alternative hostel. After a little sleep and some shopping around we arrived back at the hostel to a room full of all of the guests playing cards and sipping on beers. We were greeted warmly and instantly fit in with the Jetpak crew. We had the most fun hostel room that we have had yet on this trip. It was full of six hilarious Australian boys and then Laura and I. One was a spastic, friendly, Doug loving, architecture pursuing mate from Sydney. His name is Sean and he has the most unique accent and funniest expressions. He would march around our room drunk searching for his sleeping pants and get worked up when "chaos" was occurring in our room. One was like a real life version of Crocodile Dundee who would wear the shortest little rugby shorts and come home from a night out snapping ugly photos of all of us yelling "Oi!". Each one of the roommates was a necessary and great addition to the best Jetpak hostel room. We spent our last day walking around in a group of ten of us to a delicious coffee shop that had the most amazing cheesecake that I have ever tasted. It melted in my mouth. After, we all went to the East Side Gallery which is a long wall full of painting after painting by different artists. It was amazing seeing so much street art in Berlin which is all very thought provoking. Some of the themes of the paintings at this gallery were love, war, religion, sexuality, travel, and many many more. I wish that I was artistically talented in any way because it is so amazing seeing someone express themselves in this way. I couldn't understand every piece of art that I saw and I wanted so badly to talk to the person who created it just to know what was going on in their mind. On our first day in Berlin we went on an Alternative walking tour which took us to a bunch of areas in Berlin that have amazing street art and famous graffiti works. We also went to Tacheles which is a massive and famous artist squat in this massive building and piece of land. We learned that it used to be bustling with tons of people and artists and there used to be a beach bar in the back, a cinema, live music, bars all at this spot. In March or April the city of Berlin decided to take it over and tear it down. There are several artist groups working together to try to save the building and preserve it. I feel so lucky to have seen this building still as an authentic artist squat and to walk around in the building and feel how much the building has been through and how much has happened there. I hope by some miracle they are able to beat the city in their actions to tear it down. On the walking tour we learned about several groups of graffiti artists that place their "logos" all over the city. There is one called 1Up after the Super Mario game. It was funny to see the 1Up all over Berlin after doing this walking tour. I would have never noticed that it was all over the place unless I had done this tour. It was cool to see a city this way instead of doing the basic walking tour to the famous sites. I felt like I really got to experience the character of Berlin through this walking tour.
I learned everything there is to know about the Holocaust time period and the Nazi Germany occupation in Europe in Berlin. There is so much information about this time period in Berlin. It is all over the city and thoroughly depicted in several exhibits and museums all over. We went to the Holocaust memorial that is just rows and rows of blocks of stone and marble that are different heights. This was the second time that I have been to this memorial and it took on a completely different meaning the second time around. It is crazy how much of a difference 5-7 years in age makes. The last time I went to Berlin I was in high school and did not absorb the city in the same way at all. We went to the museum that is at the Holocaust memorial and it is so dense and moving. It first walks through the history of this time period, and then there is a dark room with real letters and poems and excerpts from diaries projected on the floor from the Jews during this time period. Reading the fear and confusion that was running through the minds of all of these people was so horrible. I almost cried reading these letters. Then there is an even darker room that just projects name after name on the wall with dates for the length of their life. Then there is a short excerpt about the life of these people and what they know to have happened to them. I read in that room that it would take six years, seven months, and twenty seven days to read all of the names and brief life stories of all of the known deceased Jews from the Holocaust. Every time we would go to exhibits or museums like this I would leave so angry about how out of hand that time period in history got to be. I'm glad they have so much thorough information about the time period and the happenings of this so that people are aware and so that something like this never happens again.
Overall, Berlin is one of the most unique places that I have been. It is different in its beauty in that I didn't walk around and think that the architecture was amazing and beautiful but it is one of the best places to go to see art everywhere. There are galleries everywhere, there are amazing art exhibits, and tons of museums as well. We also met some of the most fun and hilarious people in Berlin and had such a blast at the hostel. It was difficult to leave Berlin and our goodbye was very sad. But it was also great because we have kept in touch with several of the people that we met. We ended up staying with our friend Sean at his Aunt's apartment in Paris and we are meeting up with two of the other guys in London.
Being back in Paris was such a weird feeling. It truly felt like home. It was so strange walking around and knowing that I had been there several times before for one reason or another. There were so many random places, streets, metro stops that I recognized and I couldn't remember why I had been there before or why I remembered those little details. The beauty of Paris that you see by just walking around and looking at the buildings NEVER gets old for me. Even after traveling to so many amazing cities, I think I would still say that Paris is the most beautiful. It was so fun staying with Sean and his family. His Aunt Isabel was the cutest lady and made us a delicious home cooked meal the first night that we got there. She was trying to get me to speak french with her as much as possible which was really fun getting to use my french again, although I'm pretty rusty. On our first day we went to the Pompidou. It was one of the few museums that I did not go to when I lived that and it is an amazing museum. There is SO much material in this museum. There are several large floors with different time periods and artistic themes. They were also featuring a few artists and we saw the exhibit of one of the featured artists who had painting style similar to Van Gogh. Again in art and paintings it is so interesting seeing the thought process of these people in their unique way. This artist was painting during a time when he had an awful eye injury and the paintings through "those eyes" were so significantly different than his previous ones that you could feel the pain that he was experiencing. On one of the modern art floors I saw a painting that intrigued me because it was just two solid colors on top of each other: red and black. It struck me initially because it actually reminded me of the cover of one of the CDs of a band that my good friends from Mercer Island were in. Then I read about the painting and loved the quote by the artist about this painting, "Color, in all its vibrancy, is the simple expression of a complex thought". The painting took on an entirely different and individual meaning for me after reading this and looking at it for a long period of time. I love how that happens when you look at artwork.
We also went back to Versailles palace on our second day. That palace always shocks me with how much it is drenched in gold. It is such a beautiful palace and has the most elaborate and pristine gardens. We got to celebrate Thanksgiving in Paris and it was the most perfect day. Laura and I went to the Christmas markets and I was like a little kid in a candy store. Paris' Christmas markets are white huts one after the other lined all the way along the Champs Elysee with a Ferris wheel at the very end. There is tons of delicious food and gifts and sparkly Christmas decorations. It was so much fun walking along the Champs Elysee shopping around at the cute little huts. It made me very excited to see my family over the holidays and truly got me in the Christmas spirit. We sipped on mulled wine and crepes and just strolled around and enjoyed the atmosphere. Then we were invited to my friend from high school, John O'meara's Thanksgiving feast that he was hosting at his beautiful apartment in Paris. It was so great to be able to enjoy a delicious traditional Thanksgiving meal with a familiar face. We hung out and caught up all night and got to meet his friends.
Our last day in Paris was my favorite because we did what is the best thing to do while in Paris - walk around. We picked a couple of things we wanted to see and started at the Eiffel Tower and walked through the gardens and took some pictures, then we walked to the Arc de Triomphe and went up to the top and enjoyed the stunning Parisian views. I love the way the streets all shoot out from the Arc de Triomphe and the way the buildings look spiraling out. After that we walked along the Champs Elysee and window shopped since we passed by one high end brand store after the other filled with beautiful belongings that we cannot afford. We walked inward toward the Opera and went into Galleries Lafayette which is decorated so elaborately for the holidays. It was so sad to leave Paris again. However, every time I leave Paris I always know that I will be back someday :)
After Paris we went two hours south to Lyon to visit friends that we met in Budapest. They are studying in Lyon and we decided after we met them to take a weekend trip to visit them! It was such a blast and really cool to see another city in France because we had not planned to travel around in France besides Paris initially. We had a delicious dinner cooked for us by our friend Harrison on our first night in Lyon and enjoyed a fun night out with all of our Lyonnian friends! The night started with Canadian flag temporary tattoos and ended with four of our friends taking a dip in the fountain. It was great to meet up with friends from this trip and it makes me know that they will be friends that I will stay in touch with after this trip ends.
We are now in London and have been here since Monday! The craziest thing is that we are staying with someone that we met over the summer in San Diego while he was traveling around the US and Mexico. He happened to stop our friend Steph while she was running to ask her where to go out in San Diego, which ended up with him and his friends hanging out at my summer house in San Diego. Laura and him have kept in touch and we have been tripping around London with him since we got here. We've spent a lot of time in London just walking around the different neighborhoods. We walked around the first day and saw all of the main sites. Westminster Abby and the Parliment building with Big Ben never cease to amaze me. The architecture of those buildings are so beautiful. We have also met up with two of our other friends from school Jason Cope and Adam Vanni who are both living in London. It has been so great to see familiar faces and to see the kind of life they are living here. We'll be here until Wednesday and then I am going to Belfast and am so so excited to finally get to go to Ireland!! I have been dying to visit Ireland for my entire life. We are going to try to rent a car which could be interesting with the whole driving on the other side of the road and the opposite driver seat.
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