This morning we all got up awaiting our departure to Berlin from Nuremberg. One notable memory about this morning— and all mornings here at the hotel— was the breakfast. The hotel serves a classic German breakfast which includes meat, cheese, cereal, yogurt, and assorted breads. The item at breakfast that was a fan favorite was the coffee machine. Most of us had not seen this type of coffee machine before and I, personally, had a total of 5 cappuccinos over the course of the two days.
Our journey to Berlin was through the beautiful German countryside. Outside your window you could see little villages and many, many, windmills. We stopped twice on our commute which included a German convenience store and a rest stop with some familiar American restaurants: Starbucks and Burger King. At both of these spots, you had to pay to use the b
athroom, which came as a surprise to some of us. This is one of the many contrasts to what we see in the US that deepens our understanding of European culture.
In the evening, we said good-bye to our Nuremberg driver, Mr. Zoltan, checked into our new hotel, and then walked around the city. The Amplemann is Berlin’s official mascot.
He’s the symbol on the crosswalk for when to cross or not— something very representative of east Berlin.
In the short time that we strolled around the city, we went to the Hackescher Markt. This is a secluded neighborhood where Jewish intellectuals and artists thrived before WWII. Here, too, there was an Amplemann gift shop where some of us bought souvenirs (Brendan bought a reflective Amplemann vest). On our way out of the neighborhood, we saw our first Stumbling Stone, one of 100,000 in Berlin that represent individual people murdered in the Holocaust and placed at the sites of those people’s homes.
