Berlin

Short update,

My sister and I survived our vacation. Yes, survived. We had big plans but second day of travels we had our purse stolen with passports, credit cards, cash, phones, the whole nine-yards. Very thankful to my friends who helped us from becoming American hobos in Berlin! So there was a lot of drama with that and resulted in us just cutting Italy completely out of our plans. We have learned a lot from this experience.
~ Don't carry everything in one bag.
~ There is a reason to buy travel insurance and flight insurance.
~ Our first time in a police station and it was a German one!
~ The US Embassy in Berlin is a lie. A cruel, cruel joke.
~ It is difficult to survive without credit/debit cards anymore.

My sister would say we also learned to not travel to Berlin, but that's a bit harsh :P


Longer update,

We started off the journey with my sister documenting every moment, then after the theft there is a sudden stop in photo taking, however, even with this disaster we took a whole lot of pictures to share. More than a single update can handle so I'm breaking up the photo sharing in a few updates over this week and separating them by location, so the final "Manchester" update will be chronologically out of order, but I'm sure you can survive.

 

 

And our adventure starts out in Berlin! My friend recommended the East Side Gallery. It is a long section of the Berlin Wall that was painted in 1990 by a variety of artists.

One of the ones my sister liked. You'll notice in this part is the bat symbol!

 

It's sad that there is so much graffiti over the art, but we soon got used to it. Berlin has graffiti and street art everywhere and the lines soon begin to blur. Which is art and which is just graffiti?

 

Yeah, I'm terrifying.

Contemplating the art and graffiti.

This one was cool, but not actually part of the East Side Gallery. Street art like this is anywhere and everywhere in Berlin.

 

We arrive in Berlin and my friend takes us to one of the street food places. We are excited and entertained by everything at this point, particularly the coke bottles with names.

The subway system in Berlin. We spent a lot of time looking at signs and reading maps...and still being confused.

Right by the Brandenburg Gate is the US Embassy. We saw it the first day we were in Berlin and took a picture as a laugh...little did we know. After losing our passports we came straight here, only to be turned away. Turns out the embassy is never open. You have to go to the consulate which is on the other side of town...Real helpful.

Brandenburg Gate!

After all that walking we spent some time in the park just enjoying the scenery :)

 

The Victory Column. I'm in this picture, I'm that tiny little pixel at the base of the monument. This thing is huge.

I have never seen a cigarette vending machine before...

Lots of bear statues in Berlin. The coat of arms for the city is a bear, according to wiki, so its their mascot thing. NM's would be a roadrunner or coyote I guess. We use the coyote a lot more in NM art, but the roadrunner is actually our state bird so it's a toss-up.

My sister took this pic, I don't remember seeing him but it looks like disaster has struck. I'm sure he was actually just repairing the boat but the picture tells a different story.

Giant rose statues!

Jewish Memorial in Berlin. Apparently caused a bit of a stir when it was executed. Various minorities wanted memorials of their own and then were upset that their memorials were smaller. Several people feel that this memorial takes up too much space. I think they feel that since it is made of concrete blocks that a smaller patch of blocks would have been sufficient.

 

I don't know. I think that it has to be huge because the statues are simple. The memorial is really about the size of the tragedy and doesn't delve into the complexity or try and give more elaborate imagery. You are welcome to disagree with me and we could "discuss" the issue :P

 

Now the pictures suddenly stop. Our purse was stolen. We had to find the police station, then find the US Embassy, then find the US consulate, then figure out how to get money, where we were going to stay, what phone to use to call family and change flights and cancel cards....it was a long weekend.

We went to this internet café to print paper and prep for replacing our passports. We thought the sign was entertaining. Drucken is the German word for printing, not to be confused with drücken with dots over the ü, which means push (for doors, or buttons)

My translation :

Dog parking.

 

Translation :

Caution, brats crossing

Translation :

???

 

Statue outside what I think was the art gallery. My sister is about to get eaten!

My friend showed us this cool hidden art gallery with a staircase filled with competing street art and graffiti. The tiger gets my approval :D

Cool statue at the main train station.

We went to the German  History Museum. We took a lot of pics but I'm going to just show you this one. There were four statues and they were suppose to represent the four continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America (North and South America are apparently one continent for this artist). America here is suppose to be a Native American seated on a crocodile.

And our last meal in Germany, I decided we should have crepes. This picture makes me laugh, my sister captured a great moment. I'm squinting at the coins. I've gotten use to the British pence and pounds so I'm struggling again to figure out the Euro coins. I'd had it figured out in Finland. My friend there was probably making fun of me :P

 

 

 So that is the highlights of Berlin. We were suppose to be there for three days. My sister's flight got delayed so it was pushed back to two, then our passports were stolen and the embassy/consulate isn't open on weekends so it got pushed out to six. Ah, traveling. We went from Berlin back to Manchester in order to try and replace a few things, then continued our plans for London. Next update I'll skip straight to the London pics.