15 Sep. Berlin

Hi everyone,

How are you doing? I hope your doing good and either already started into work, uni or school smoothly or you still enjoy the rest of your summer holidays. Well I am back now from my final trip this summer and it certainly was a successful finish to the travelling season. I can’t believe how lucky I am, that I was able to travel and experience so much this summer, it has truly been wonderful. I am now full of inspiration and motivation for the next chapter, which I also want to share with you on here, but first I thought I’d share some travel tips, pictures and inspo from our Germany trip, so lets get into it.

The pictures in this post are a mix again, between my camera and phone and all of the boys phones as well, so there’ll be a mix between different moods and perspectives, which I personally really enjoy.

For this trip my boyfriend and two of his guy friends asked me if I wanted to join them to come to Germany with them, more specifically first to Berlin and then to Hamburg and since I haven’t been to either one of those cities, I happily accepted. In this post I will only share all about Berlin, since it would get too long to have both cities in this one post, so I’ll do a seperate one about Hamburg very soon.

We started the trip off with taking the train to Vienna, where a plane then took us to Berlin. When we arrived in our accomodation I couldn’t believe my eyes, I suspected it to be just a simple hostel, one that I kind of already got used to from my Ireland-trips, but this one was completly different. It was the fanciest hostel I’d ever seen, so cool designed and super cozy.(It’s Design Hostel P182 Berlinfor anyone interested) So we had a little rest and then headed straight into the city. First stop was buying a little snack and on our way of finding it we went through Sony Center, which looks very spectacular. There are a lot of shops around and underneath it.

After filling our bellies with a sandwhich we decided to go up the Kollhoff Tower to get an overview of Berlin and oh boy it was worth those few euros. You have a fantastic view up there and have a lot of descriptions, so you know what you are looking at. I can definitly recommend going up there.

We then decided to walk in direction of the Brandenburger Tor and on our way there, we passed the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which not only looks cool, but gets you thinking a bit, about what horrible things took place in the past, just where we live now.

Next up was the Brandenburger Tor of course. This is one of the most popular photo motives of Berlin I believe. We actually didn’t think it was the actual one in the beginning, because we expected it to be bigger and taller, but oh well. Since the Reichstag is right next to it we strolled alongside it, had a look at the cool building but decided against queuing to get in.

On our way to find a place for dinner we had a drink on the street called Unter den Linden, where we simply relaxed for a moment, since travelling day for me always is one of the most exhausting days of a trip. For dinner Flo and Max ordered some traditional Berlin Curry Wurst and Totti had half a meter of sausage, which was obviously huge and I had some dumplings in mushroom sauce, which all were pretty traditional. By the way we had dinner at Gendarmenmarkt, which in my opinion is one of the most beautiful town squares, so very recommendable for just strolling around there. We bought a drink on our way home and simply played a card game and had the drink in the comunity room, before going to bed.

The next day we met for breakfast in a little cafe right on the street of our hostel, where we went to every morning, since they had lovely breakfast options and coffee. (It’s called Urban Supply if anyone is interested) Afterwards we decided to go to Alexanderplatz first thing. Not only were there a lot of sneaker shops, which the boys wanted to check out, but also the famous World Clock, which shows you the time around the world (I know uuuuuh who would have guessed). Alexanderplatz also has the tall televison tower, where you can go up as well, which is the coolest again. I don’t know if you already noticed, but I really enjoy getting views of cities and places from high up, since you can see where you’ve already been and where you still plan on going.

We then decided to take a look at the Harksche Höfe, which I think look really cool and fancy. There are a lot of cute shops to get souveniers, little nig nags or fancy fashion items. We found the cutest cafe, where we sat under a tree, while it started raining, but the tree kept us from getting wet.

Flo really wanted to go to this one shop, called Sandqvist, which is such a cool shop, that has sustainable bags, backpacks and in Flos case a really chic and cool looking weekender, which he got. We then had some lunch and simply strolled through the streets for a while.

We went into one of biggest bookstores in all Germany called Dussmann and then went back to Gendarmenmarkt, since it was such a gorgeous place. We also went into the Rausch-store, which is a German chocolate brand, where we looked at the exhibition pieces out of chocolate and bought some tiny pieces to try.

In the evening we made some pasta in the hostel, which was very nice and felt very homie in a way. We then went to one of the coolest bars, we’ve seen. Flos dad had recommended the Schwarze Traube to us, and let me tell you, it was a bomber. We were the only people in the bar, which I normally really don’t enjoy, since for me it doesn’t speak for the bar, cafe or restaurant, but for this bar it was different. The owner told us the four drinks he was doing that night, which all were classics with subtle changes, like infusionsed alcohol or special fruits and juices he added, that normally wouldn’t go in the drink. It wasn’t only going to a bar, it was an  experience. Very very recommendable, if you are ever coming to Berlin.

The next day we decided to rent a bike for the day and cruise around the city and this is surly one of the best things to do in my opinion. You can see so much of the city while still moving around pretty quickly, for me this is just perfect. We first went to the big park in Berlin the Tiergarten and just drove through it for a while, just to enjoy the lovely weather and the summery feel. On our way we saw the Russian memorial, the Siegessäule and the Schloss Bellevue. Then we drove alongside the river Spree for a while, since it was just a very beautiful path to take to our lunch destination, a beer garden called Schleusenkrug. We had a lovely little break, with beer, Alsterwasser (beer and lemonade mixed) and some traditional food.

After we had recharged our batteries for a while we took the bike to get to Schloss Charlottenburg, which had a wonderful park, which we walked in for a while and rested a little again, before we parked our bikes at a drop off point at Kufürstendamm.

The Kurfürstendamm is well known for housing all the super expensive shops like Gucci, Prada and Chanel, so we just walked along this one to have a look at those and then decided on sitting down somewhere for a cool drink again, since the bike riding had been pretty exhausting for us. After having a look at the Gedächtniskirche, which was still looking like the day of the bomb attack on it, we decided to head home to take a little rest before the evening.

For the evening we had something special planned, which was Clärchens Ballhaus, a place where you could have a lovely meal and afterwards go dancing, depending on which programme they had for the night. You could either go Salsa dancing or Swing dancing as we did, well Flo and me at least. It’s such a cool location and very recommendable if you are a little interested in dancing.

For the fourth day in Berlin we still had a lot of things we wanted to see, but took it a little easier. First on the list was visiting the Museum quarters, which are on a half island in the river Spree and the Monbijou Park right next to it, where we sat down for a while and relaxed in the sun.

Next stop was the East Side Gallery, which is surly one of the most well-known places in Berlin. I was amazed by the different art pieces and it also made me think how hard it must have been having this awful wall simply dividing a country. We then went over the bridge to arrive in Kreuzberg, where we looked at cool shoe- and concept stores. Flo and I were immediately drawn to the cool atmosphere in this quarter. Sure it’s not the cleanest, but therefore has even more personality, with all the graffiti and the doors full of stickers. Well the pictures surely explain it better than I do, so here you go.

One of my must-sees for Berlin was the Klunkerkranich, which is a place on top of a shopping center, on an old car-park place. It is an area for very chill people, that respect a lot of diversity in their comunity and where you should feel at eas in a way. We got some food, looked at the urban gardening, which I wanted to see (and to be honest, which was tinie tiny to my dissapointment), nevertheless I really enjoyed it up there.

We then decided to split up for a while, so Max and Totti went back home to chill for a while and Flo and I went back to Kreuzberg. We simply wanted to stroll around, have a look at the Oranienstraße, which had a lot of really cool shops, restaurants and cafes. We decided on having two Chai-lattes and just enjoyed being with each other for a moment.

Back at home at the hostel we made Pizza all together again and chilled there for a while and then Flo and I decided to bring the two of them to a bar we had seen in Kreuzberg,  the Apotheken Bar, which was a really good one for our last evening in Berlin.

In the next morning we packed all our stuff up and checked out of our hostel, before we went down to our breakfast spot one last time. We then decided on going back to the Harksche Höfe, more specifically to the Haus Schwarzenberg, which is a really cool and artsy place, where we simply strolled around and had a look at all the graffitis, which were breathtaking.

We also shopped a little bit that day in preparation for Hamburg, since the weatherforcast wasn’t that warm and dry at all. Next stop was Bikini Berlin, a huge shopping center, with a lot of small brands and stores, that present new ideas and the coolest things. It also had a rooftop terrace with a few cafes, so we decided to sit down at one, that was looking down on the Berlin Zoo and the adorable monkeys, which I couldn’t take my eyes off of for our whole stay there.

In the evening we took the train from Berlin to Hamburg, which was a little stressful, since it was so full and we had no seats reserved, but it all worked out in the end and we arrived safely in Hamburg.

All about Hamburg, its beautiful channels, bridges and places is going to be in the next blog post, so stay tuned, if you want to know what we did there as well.

Thanks so much for reading, I really love doing these travel-posts, since I’ll always be able to look back at them and remember the good times we had there.

See you soon,

Lena xx