For my final blog, I would like to reflect on my last few days in Berlin. This was the first weekend that I stayed in Berlin, and I’m glad that I did. It was nice just to relax, and explore some of the things that the city has to offer.
On Friday, I got to go to the Berlin Zoo. I have been wanting to go since arriving in Berlin. We spent about four hours there and got to also explore the aquarium. My favorite part of the zoo had to be the penguin exhibit. I have never been able to see penguins up close because the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo doesn’t have a penguin exhibit. It was cool to see the smaller penguins jumping off rocks into the water. One thing that I noticed while at the zoo was how sad many of the animals on display looked. This was very apparent when seeing the lion exhibit. The lion just sat up in front of the window with its eyes closed. When it finally got up, it started pacing back and forth making noises. It was very sad seeing the animals like this. Comparing the Berlin Zoo to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, it is noticeably smaller in size, which came as a surprise because of the large variety of animals on display.
On Saturday, we went to Treptower Park. While at the park we rented a paddle boat and took it up and down the Spree for an hour. It was a nice experience that if I hadn’t spent the weekend in Berlin, I wouldn’t have gotten to do. We also ate lunch on a little island located on the spree at Treptower. After we had left the park, I split off from the group and went to KaDeWe. While at KaDeWe, I got to walk around high-end stores, such as Louis Vuitton. Once I left KaDeWe, I took the bus to meet back up with the rest of the group. On the way, I stopped at Checkpoint Charlie. Later Saturday night, once the Prague group got back, we went to Soda Club to celebrate our last Saturday together. While at Soda Club, we went exploring and found three more dancefloor rooms that we didn’t know about from our visit last week.
Sunday, the group went to Mauerpark for the flea market. It was fun to explore all the different stands set up with a variety of items for sale. While at the flea market, I purchased two small photographs of Berlin for 12 Euros. One of the photos is of the graffiti at the East Side Gallery, and the other is of an S-Bahn train. We also stayed at the park for karaoke. It was a lot of fun to see all the different people from countries all around the world coming together to sing popular songs. The show was put on by an American man and the songs that were sung were primarily in English, but a few German songs were also thrown into the mix.
Monday, we got to tour Humboldt University. It was interesting to tour a university in a foreign country. After the tour, a group of us went to Strandbad Wannsee to go swimming at the lake. We swam out to the waterslide that is in the middle of the water and spent much of our time going down it. The beach was much cleaner than I expected and the water was surprisingly clear. I plan on going back to the beach before leaving for Prague on Saturday.
In conclusion, I had an amazing time this weekend relaxing and enjoying the city of Ber