A birthday in Berlin

After a very exciting first day in Berlin, the rest of the week in Berlin was not so dramatic.  Tuesday we wandered the city and shopped at the most amazing thrift store called Humana (http://www.humana-second-hand.de/mode/first-class.html).  I also got to meet up with my brother’s girlfriend, Alison, who had been studying abroad in Berlin for the semester. also took us to the most amazing art store I have ever had the honor of walking into.  I wish I knew the name and while I tried to look it up, apparently Berlin has a ton of giant art stores that make it hard to figure out which one is right.

After our exciting shopping spree we went to dinner at an authentic place called Max and Moritz. I tried beef goulash, an authentic German dish, but after having such amazing vegetarian food all week, it was not as great as I had been eating.

My authentic German dress I got for only $28 USD!

After dinner we went out to a German club that had live music called Wild at Heart- 

The band playing kept on making references to San Francisco so I talked to them to see where they were from.  It was really cool because out of all the places the band could’ve been from… they were from Sonoma County!  Our own home!  They lived in a town twenty minutes away!  It is such a small world!  I was super happy to have some Americans to talk to and I finally got successfully drunk for the first time on the trip. I met a new wonderful German friend named Inga who lives in Bavaria, so now if I ever make it to Oktoberfest, I have someone to stay with!  She managed to capture one of the very few drunk photos of me on the internet.  But since I have no shame, I’ll share it with you all.

A drunk April. Ich trank vier Bier.

 On Wednesday (April 11th)  Melody and I decided we wanted to check out another part of Germany so we bought bus tickets to the city of Dresden, about an hour and a half south of Berlin. Dresden was severely affected by WWII but we still wanted to check it out.  Unfortunately though I didn’t understand the directions on how to get to the bus stop at the airport and we ended up in a town called Potsdam… totally not at all by the bus stop we were trying to get to.  Not even in Berlin, lol.  I ended up having a pretty big breakdown with lots of tears from all the stress and we ended up missing our bus plus having to lose the money spent on the tickets and our hostel ($110).  It didn’t help that I also realized mid-breakdown that it was the anniversary of  my Grandpa’s death and made the tears come even harder… So that was another crappy part of the trip.

 The next day was my birthday and Melody and I decided to finally go see some actual tourist spots and check out the Jewish Museum (Melody is half Jewish).  The museum was quite fascinating and we also got to see some of the other cool places in the city.  As usual, I had fun experimenting with photography.

That night we met up with Alison for dinner. After roaming the streets for hours trying to find this particular 1950’s style diner only to find out they were out of business – we ended up just eating some delicious Turkish food from a FABULOUS roadside stand called Mustafas. I got a lamb kebab and it was incredible. We sat on a bench on the street watching all the people from all over the world in line for this great food.  It ended up being a really memorable birthday dinner.  Since I didn’t have cake, we got ice cream bars and they sang to me in the train station loudly as passersby walked by with smiles.

 The Holocaust Memorial Garden
at the Jewish Museum


 After dinner Melody and I attempted to get home only to find that many of the trains were under construction. Those damn S-Bahns make it so hard to get around!   After two hours we finally made it back to Sascha’s at 1:30 AM only to have to be awake two hours later to catch a train to the airport for our 7am flight to Copenhagen, Denmark.  But oh well, the night was a fun way to end our time in Berlin!

Inside the Holocaust Tower

29th Birthday in Berlin