Our European Adventure, Day 6

Today was kind of hectic because my phone got messed up somehow and the time reset in addition to the alarm not going off. I ended up waking up at around 11:45 – well after the free city tour we could have taken – and got the rest of the group up after taking a shower.

We picked up our cheap packed lunches from the hotel (only 4 euros each!) and set off walking around the city. We walked through a street market and found a pretty church on our journey to find Bebelplatz. When we finally located the building, we realized it didn’t appear to be anything special since we couldn’t understand the German signs. We ended up eating in front of the church and were approached by “a woman from Bosnia who needed money to buy her child medicine”. Madeline and Matt wanted to help her out, but Ben and I thought it was a scam.

The church we ate lunch in front of

After eating, we trekked over to the Brandenburg Gate, which is the gate that marks the separation of what used to be East and West Berlin. We saw some street performers – including a man making rather large bubbles with the assistance of tourist children – outside the gate and were approached by more street scams identical to the one we had witnessed on the other side of the city. On the other side of the gate, we located the Holocaust memorial and walked through the many posts. The memorial was very artsy and inspired Ben to play on top of the posts. He ended up getting yelled at by a security guard though, probably because he was having too much fun.

The bubble guy!

Brandenburg Gate

Ben climbing on the posts at the Holocaust Memorial

Lost in the Holocaust Memorial

We rushed back to the train station after taking pictures of the memorial to traverse to the northern part of the city for our Berlin Flak Towers Walking Tour that was supposed to show us the underground bunkers used during World War II. Unfortunately, we underestimated the amount of time it would take for us to get there via public transit and then had trouble locating the check-in point so we showed up right at the time of our scheduled tour. The office had already closed and we were unable to turn in our voucher for tickets, so we ended up being turned away.

Our rush through the train stations of Berlin

Sadly, we had to move on to our next stop at the Jewish Museum. Madeline was feeling somewhat sick while we were walking through the museum, so she went to sit down, but Matt and I actually got kicked out because they were trying to close down the exhibits and we were still wandering around. After leaving, we found Madeline some cold medicine at the pharmacy in the train station and purchased some groceries for our dinner on the train tomorrow evening.

Madeline lost in the Axis Garden of the Holocaust at the Jewish Museum, quite similar to the Holocaust Memorial

After running back to the hotel to verify our reservation for later in the trip in Prague, we went back to the main train station for dinner at Hopfingerbrau, a traditional German restaurant. The meal was quite satisfying, although we have definitely had cheaper.

My chicken, cabbage, and bread at dinner

Our shared desert

Once we paid the bill, we decided to come back to the hotel to give Madeline time to rest for our walking tour tomorrow.