the starrs: Berlin, Germany

Berlin was almost a no-go for us, but I'm so glad we ended up making it to this beautiful city! On our cruise itinerary the port was listed as Warnemünde (Berlin), Germany, so we figured we would definitely be getting to explore Berlin. Well, we know I'm not so great at geography, and Thomas did try to warn me, but Berlin was a lot further from the port than I anticipated. It also wasn't part of my Scandinavia tour book (which makes sense since it's not in Scandinavia ha), which should've been another clue that this was going to be a little adventure. When we got off the cruise ship we found the train station nearby (yay!), but the ticket machines didn't take our credit cards and we didn't quite have enough Euros to get the tickets to Berlin (nor did we realize at that point how long of a train ride it was going to be). We bought cheap tickets to the closest bigger town (Rostock) hoping to find an ATM and more information there. We made it and then discovered that it was going to be a three hour train ride each way to Berlin. Yikes. It was 10:30am at this point, and we had to be back at the boat at 9:00pm...I was a little wary of spending so much on train tickets when we might have only 5 hours at best in the city, but we had been looking forward to Berlin for so long, so we decided to go for it. I'm SO glad we did - Berlin was amazing. We didn't get to see/do nearly everything we wanted there, but it was a good starting point, and now we know that we could easily spend a weekend there if we decide do go back.

We came out of the central train station in Berlin, which was surprisingly pretty for a train station, and happened to be right next to the Reichstag (which houses Germany's Parliament). We then made our way to the Brandenburg gate, which was one of the places we most wanted to see in Berlin. This was one of the gates along the wall that formerly divided East and West Berlin, and where President Reagan called to tear down the Berlin Wall in 1987. It was very cool to be standing in front of a huge piece of history, and to imagine how life was at that location not too long ago.

Next we stopped for brats (delicious) and wandered down the Unter den Linden, which was beautifully lined with linden trees. We came to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is a 4.7 acre area covered with 2,711 different sized cement blocks. I'm not sure what (if any) the symbolism is of the cement blocks, but it was a nice memorial site nonetheless. We kept on walking down Unter den Linden, we love to just walk and take in the atmosphere. Thomas found a stein to take home, and we finally got a map so we could find our next destination - Museum Island. This little island was located in the Spree River (I believe it's a world UNESO site) and contains five significant museums along with the Berlin Cathedral. We don't normally explore too many museums, unless they are history oriented, but we did want to go into Pergamon Museum. Unfortunately the line was very long and we were getting a little anxious about catching our train back to the port, so we decided to save it for when we come back to Berlin another time (hopefully!). We did jump over to Checkpoint Charlie before we headed out of the city, which was the best known crossing point from East to West Berlin during the Cold War. Good ol' Wikipedia states that Checkpoint Charlie "...was the only crossing between West Berlin and East Berlin that could be used by Americans and other foreigners, and by members of the Allied forces. The other six checkpoints were for residents of West Berlin or West Germany." It had a nicely done little museum, as well as a piece of the Berlin Wall.

After our last stop we hightailed it back to the train station and caught the earlier train back to Warnemünde. There was a train that left about an hour and a half later than the one we took, but we were a little paranoid about something going wrong and not making it back to the boat on time...we figured it wouldn't be a very nice end to the day if we missed the boat, so we played it safe and made it back with plenty of time to spare. :)

Day 3 was an "At Sea" day, which was a relaxing break from being tourists. We enjoyed all the free food (and unlimited ice cream!), played a lot of basketball ping-pong, and even a little shuffleboard. The weather was decent, but it wasn't quite warm enough to lounge by the pools, so we also spent quite a bit of time reading and watching movies. On to Estonia tomorrow!