Dear reader(s),
Tomorrow is our last day in Berlin. Technically though I won't leave til the late evening on Tuesday so it's actually more like my second-to-last day, but still. In honor of how awesome Berlin is I'm going to list some things about it that are...well, awesome.
1) Public transit. Easily the best thing about the city. It's fast, it's clean, it always arrives right on time, and the seats are way more comfortable than the seats on the El.
2) Dogs. They're everywhere - people bring them on trains and to restaurants and everything - and they are super well-behaved. And cute, of course.
3) Alcohol. Beer is almost always cheaper than Coke. And since you can legally buy it here at 16, I've hardly ever gotten carded. Not that it matters anyway, but still.
4) "Green" thinking. Every time you buy something in a bottle at the store - like beer, or water - they charge you about 25 eurocents as a deposit, and when you bring the bottles back and recycle them you get your deposit back. Is that a great idea or what? Also the escalators in the train stations have motion sensors, so when no one is on them they turn off but when someone walks up to them they turn back on again. GENIUS.
5) History. Almost everywhere you look is a place where something major happened. Maybe the Berlin Wall used to be there, or there's a house with a little plaque outside of it because a Jewish person lived there who was deported by the Nazis, or you can see see where shells made dents in a building and they've been spackled over. But so many crazy things have happened in/to Berlin that there's an interesting fact to be learned nearly anywhere you go.
6) Free/cheap things. A lot of the museums and other places we've been to have been free, and most other ones are way cheaper than they would be in America. Germans place high priority on culture and making it accessible to everyone. That's pretty neat.
7) Okay, I'm going to apologize in advance for getting political on this one, but...gay marriage is legal here. The mayor of Berlin is gay and no one bats an eye when he and his partner go to functions together. And, as my professor said, "The government hasn't collapsed yet."
8) Food. Overall, way less oily and fatty than American food. I've definitely gotten less indigestion since I've been here.
9) Austrian punk bands. On Friday night one of my classmates took us to a bar where some Austrian kids he knew were playing in a show. They were super nice and knew English and were happy to have us obnoxious Americans there. And the show was great.
10) Language education. Most German kids start learning English in the 3rd grade. I wish my school had started teaching me a second language when I was that age. All the Germans seem so smart when they switch between languages, it makes me kind of feel like an idiot for only speaking one.
That's all I can think of for now but of course there are tons of awesome things about Berlin. I'm going to be so sad when we leave, but at least there's still Munich, London, and Dublin to look forward to.
Ciao,
Anna
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