Jour 105 - Free Walking Tour Around Berlin

December 3rd, Saturday

 

The girls and I woke up early to catch the free walking tour hosted by New Sandemans. Oh and before leaving the hostel, I took a picture of the hallway of my hostel. Isn't it pretty? :)

 

The weather forecast today: rainy. So I was wearing my kiddy rain boots! Haha!

 

For the walking tour, we had to meet up our tour guide in front of Brandenburg Gate. 

 

We thought that there was gonna be a tour at 9, but during the winter the earliest tour starts at 11. So we had time to take pictures of the place and roam around.

 

I finally saw the Kennedy museum! I saw this first in Gia's blog. And I was happy to finally take a picture of it :)

 

We still had time to spare so we decided to walk to the memorial. This memorial is actually a dream of Aira. She wants a picture of her lying down... which happened by the way! But then the guard saw her and stopped her :)) It's in Kwi's camera!

 

Seeing this I felt so cold, inside and out. Oh poor Jews...

 

The girls and I actually had funny cute pictures in Kwi's camera! Hopefully, one of these days I'll remember to post it! :)

 

Before going back to the meeting point, we headed to Ritter Sport cafe to have hot chocolate!

 

My hot chocolate had milk chocolate in it! <3 Stupid move though of ordering cheesecake with it. Ugh! The worst cheekcake I've tried so far!

 

Happy and satisfied!

 

The girls and I wanted to pose with our winter wears! Oh I shall miss looking stupid! :))

 

Our tour started with the Parisien Plaza. Our tour guide explained to us the history behind the monuments around. Very informative man! (even though he was English)

 

Berlin wall. 

 

It started to rain so it was really hard taking pictures :((

 

As we were walking for a stop at a cafe, Kwi saw her dream hat! She just had to buy it! If you don't know her, well Kwi's obsessed with Russia. :))

For the rest of the tour, I wasn't able to take pictures. :( The rain and the cold really destroyed my mood! Our last stop was Museum Island. But by then, the girls and I were so so tired and hungry. So we decided to go to the nearest Christmas market for our late lunch/early dinner!

 

Ohhh I was so happy when I finally saw a stall that sold sausages! <3

xx

Jour 104 - Bear-lin

December 2nd, Friday

As I said in my previous entry, after 12 hours of pain..touchdown Berlin!!!!! :)

We got down the central station in order to take the S-Bahn to our hostel. Oh I have good news to those who are thinking of buying a Eurail Pass. One perk you have in Berlin is that you'll have unlimited access on the S-Bahn! Yipeeee! So yes, I didn't need to pay for most of my metro rides since most of the places had S-Bahn stations :)

Our hostel was awarded as last year's best new hostel!

It felt so different. It didn't feel like a hostel at all. Too sosyal! But there's one thing you need to know, I just paid around 11EUR per night! Super not bad right? :) :)

So happy when I found out that there's a Lidl beside our hostel! I swear, Lidl is my favorite supermarket here in Europe. It's so cheap that I always get shocked at my bill (always less than half the amount I'd be paying in other supermarkets).

Since Aira and Sam were gonna arrive later, we decided to go for a quick walking tour. We went here to find out that the free walking tour we wanted to go to was just one. So we ditched the tour and went to the Christmas market beside it :)

I don't know if you know this but Christmas is really big in Germany. I was surprise to find out that Berlin even has its own pdf for all the Christmas markets in the city!

Cuteeeeeee <3

After checking out the Christmas market, we passed by this museum. We didn't go in though. The price to enter was too expensive for what we expected to see.

It started to rain so I suggested that we go inside a covered area and chill for a bit. I wanted to eat the red velvet cake (the one I tried in Madrid) but they didn't have it. I opted for the cheesecake since I really miss Cheesecake factory BUT... it still wasn't the same :((

Back to our hostel..Notice anything? Well that's our fridge. The weather in Berlin is so cold that you can just leave food outside and it can serve as a refrigeration. :))

Finally, the girls got to Berlin! :) It was pretty late already but still we wanted to take them to a nearby Christmas market to eat :)

We had Currywurst for dinner! It's this type of Berliner dish that has some kind of barbeque sauce and curry powder on top. Strange combination but really really good! <3

We didn't do much in the market (a.k.a. eat much) cause it closed at 10. :))

xx

Jour 103 - Night Train Revelation

December 1st, Thursday

I was supposed to have an oral exam in French today but I didn't realize that my night train to Germany was also the same night. Good thing my professor was kind enough to say I could take it next week :) So I had the whole morning to prepare. I was really feeling nervous about this - Kwi had to catch another train cause apparently my train was too expensive. All I was thinking about was 12 hours in the train would be like hell :| I wouldn't be able to sleep because I'd be so paranoid to watch over my things :| Anyway, so from Lille I went to Paris to catch my night train which was at 8. I was trying to stay calm the whole time. I went inside the train earlier to take pictures :))

I was lucky to sit with two Australians who were friendly. Oh and also this French man who didn't talk. No one bugged me! :) And then came 11pm. I would wake up every so often and when I opened my eyes, I saw KWI! Yes, I saw herrrrrrr. OMG. We didn't know we would be in the same train! @_@ So my night train experience wasn't so bad after all :) 

Though here are some things you should know about night trains:

(a) it's not that safe - you'll have to constantly watch your things

(b) you can't super doze off - taking a nap in a seat is not the most comfortable thing to do for 12 hours

(c) you'll have to stretch and go out of your seat once in a while - don't don't don't ever follow me. I didn't really stretch and after 12 hours I felt my feet numb up @_@

To cut the story short, after 12 hours of grueling train time Kwi and I finally got to Berlin!

xx