Study Abroad Berlin: May 25, 2016

Day 3: The Berlin Wall Memorial

The Berlin Wall memorial was really neat. The details that the tour guide gave were so interesting and sad at the same time. I was really surprised to find out that the wall was built over time and not just up from one night to the next how I'm sure most of us thought it had been. Originally the separation was a pile of barbed wire. The memorial is one of the three parts that are still standing of the original wall.

To the side of the memorial was this round chapel (The Chapel of Reconciliation). The original chapel was a really neat building that was ordered to be blown up, and the pictures that they had of the building coming down were astonishing. It was rebuilt obviously as a more humble yet modern little chapel.

The rest of the afternoon we had free so I spent the day adventuring with Ben and Ebony. We ventured out to Potsdamer Platz and wandered around the Mall of Berlin for a while. The thing that impressed me the most is that the entire third floor was a food court. This area was enormous. The variety of food was overwhelming. There was Greek, Italian, German, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, Mediterranean, you name it, they had it. I don’t think I will ever get tired of the variety of food here. I’m sure that you could go more than a year and never eat at the same restaurant twice.

I’m starting to get to know Berlin a little more and feel more comfortable just wandering around seeing what I find along the way.

Well actually the day did not end there. One of the guys from Navos suggested we check out this club called the Matrix. Turns out the place was crossing the street from our hotel and was where the continuous bass came from night after night. Ebony and I decided to check it out and get our first ‘nightlife’ experience here in Berlin. When we asked what nights were good to go out, Jana said that every day but Mondays. That was absolutely true, because for a Wednesday night that club was packed. The club was so unique. It was under the Warschaure Strasse station for the U-Bahn (subway). The club was actually these tunnels and it was definitely different than the club scene I am used to back home. The coolest part though was that there was two different tunnels and each one was playing different music, you could just walk from one area to the other and not hear the music that was playing in the other area. One tunnel had current popular music while the other one was playing music from the 80, 90s, and early 2000s. Talk about walking into a time warp. It was a great night of dancing.