October 3rd and 4th were holidays over here so we decided to head to Berlin – if we had looked up why these days were holidays we might have gone to Berlin on a different weekend. Thursday the 3rd was German Reunification Day – so Berlin was soooo crowded. There was a huge festival going on around the Brandenburg Tor, which was cool to experience, but made sightseeing a little difficult. We didn’t arrive in Berlin until around 2pm, so after checking into our apartment we only had time for a few things. We took the UBahn to Potsdamerplatz and then walked towards the Grandenburg Tor, stopping by the Holocaust memorial on the way. We walked around the festival for a while, listened to some good (and some really bad) karaoke, ate some bratwurst, and checked out some of the vendors. Then we headed over to the Reichstag which is the German Parliament building. We had hoped to go up in the Dome because there are beautiful views of the city and you can see down to the parliament floor, but sadly when we headed to the ticket office there were several HUGE tour buses worth of people already in line and all the time slots that would have worked for us were sold out. Next time we’ll know to book way in advance. We walked around to the front of the Brandenburg Tor (earlier we were behind it and there was a huge stage set up) and we were able to get a few pictures, but because of the festivities there were fences and trucks all around it. We walked down Unter den Linden a little ways then headed over to Gendarmenmarkt. We looked around Fassbender & Rausch (a huge Chocolatier) and bought some heisse schokoladenpulver (hot chocolate powder) before walking down to Checkpoint Charlie. Checkpoint Charlie was the best-known Berlin wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War. By this point it was getting late so we headed to dinner at Izumi (a Sushi place Antje had recommended) and let Morgan get his sushi fix. It was really good! We finished off the night going to see a movie (Gravity) – in English! In Osnabrück movies aren’t shown in OV (original version) very often, so this was a big treat.
