We slept in a bit, woke up and went down stairs to the grocery store to get a little breakfast and walked our way into the city center toward the Berliner Dom. We didn’t end up going in, we just stayed outside and admired it.
It was such a beautiful day out, so we decided we’d walk everywhere today. On our way to Check Point Charlie, we walked through Gendarmenmarkt and got ice cream at Julian & Elisa. We sat under the shade of trees on a bench in the square, while we enjoyed our cones.
We made our way to Check Point Charlie. Along the street there was a wall of information about Berlin during World War II, leading up to the creation of the Berlin Wall. Just beyond the information was an existing piece of the wall. And a small museum, which Evan and I went into. They had a really interesting video about the wall and I don’t know it’s kind of hard to explain, I was born the year the wall came down, so I don’t know a world with a Germany divided. It was just hard for me to picture something like that happening, just completely heady. When we left the museum, we crossed the street to see the recreation of Check Point Charlie. It’s cool to see, but also a weird look. It’s surrounded by a KFC and a McDonald’s and its in an island in the middle of a street.
Following our visit to Check Point Charlie, we walked toward the Topography of Terror Museum. On our way we stopped for a snack. I got a coffee and an apfel strudel and Evan got a pretzel and beer. The cafe was just across the street from the museum. Outside the museum is a surviving section of the Berlin Wall. The Topography of Terror is located where the Secret State Police Office and prison and the leadership of the SS and the Reich Security Main Office once stood. The museum is free to enter or €8 with an audio guide. Evan and I opted to surpass the audio guide and just read through all the information. The informational boards start in Berlin 1933 and end in Berlin 1945. While it is not only an overwhelming amount of information to read through, it’s also extremely sobering and grounding. It took just over 2 hours to get through the entire museum, saying I enjoyed the museum doesn’t seem right, because what you’re reading and the photographs you’re looking at are so depressing and dark and the museum 100% serves it’s purpose. But if you’re in Berlin and have the time, I highly suggest a visit here.
Outside, just under the Berlin Wall, there’s a wall of information, but since we had just had the heavy experience inside, we decided that we would come back another time to read that and just walked along the actual wall instead.
Since we hadn’t really eaten anything today, we stopped at BRŁO for beers and some small snacks, because we had planned to get a late night dinner. It was a really cool place, there were outdoor booths to get food or regular beers and inside there were 20 options of craft beer. We decided to split a self made flight. We found a spot outside on bleachers made of wooden pallets. We started drinking our beers and then I saw two women walk past us with pickles on a stick, and I was like woah woah woah I gotta have it. We contemplated if the pickles would be sour or sweet, because Europe only does sweet pickles and it’s disgusting. I haven’t had a sour pickle in what feels like a decade. We decided to try it and Evan came back with a pretzel stick and a pickle stick. Surprisingly the pickles weren’t sweet sweet, but they also weren’t sour. But whatever they were still good. Evan and I were living our best lives.
When we finished our beer we talked to the metro around the corner and took it to the city center and got dinner at Weinhestephaner Berlin. It was bumpin’ so it took a while to actually get our food.. and there were some other mix ups, but over all the food was really good. When we finished up we started walking back to the Airbnb, we stopped at a store to get so road beers.