Exploring Alone and Emilie's 21st Birthday! - May 27, 2013

Today I woke up and it was sunny. FINALLY! I decided to embrace the sunshine and go out exploring by myself. I hadn't really gotten a chance to do that yet. I really enjoy walking around on my own so I was excited. First I went and got a pastry for  breakfast because after a while I just can't eat salami sandwiches for breakfast at the hotel. Then I rode the tram and walked to Museum Island where I bought a 3 day pass to all the museums there.

First stop was the Pergamon Museum which is really cool. Inside there is about a third of the actual Pergamon and you can walk up the steps and look around. There is also an Islamic exhibit in the museum which has beautiful wood and tile work.

I took some pictures outside in front of the Berliner Dom and then decided to walk to the Brandenburg Gate which is about a kilometer away. I slowly made my way there, people-watching along the way. I also made a stop at Humboldt University to buy a t-shirt because I collect shirts from different universities.  Once I got to the Brandenburg Gate I attempted to take a series of unfortunate selfies because I really wanted a picture of myself in front of it. None of them were very successful, so hopefully tomorrow night we can go as a group and someone can take a decent picture of me in front of it.

Next I decided to go over near some cafés by the US Embassy to get some lunch, and I settled on a Crêpe place that I had eaten at during the walking tour last week. My waiter didn't speak English, and he thought I was French so he proceeded to speak to me in French which wasn't really any better than him speaking to me in German considering I couldn't understand him either way.
 
I ordered a Berliner Weisse for the first time, and I settled on the apple flavor because that seemed like a good option. It was really weird drinking apple flavored beer through a straw. I also got a toasted baguette with turkey and some sort of cheese which turned out to be more like a pizza than a sandwich, which is what I thought it would be. So lunch was an interesting experience. Not to mention the plethora of birds flying past my face every 2 seconds. This did nothing to appease my intense fear of birds.

After lunch I had originally planned to go visit the Reichstag building, but I didn't really want to walk back in that direction and I really wanted to buy something at KaDeWe so I sat down and tried to look at my map and figure out how to get there. I had a general idea of where it was but I stared at my map for nearly 20 minutes and couldn't find it on there. Finally I gave up on looking at the map and just walked towards Potsdamer Platz until I found free wi-fi. When I found wi-fi I looked up the U-bahn stop for KaDeWe and headed towards that.

I got what I was looking for and was exhausted so I decided to head back to the hotel after that. The trip from KaDeWe takes almost 45 minutes and I was ready to relax when I got back.

Today is Emilie's 21st birthday and we all wanted to make it special for her so a few of us went back to KaDeWe to have gourmet desserts and wine. The choices were almost overwhelming. I got the KaDeWe torte, and honestly I have no idea what was in it but it was delicious. I never actually had a real dinner.

After dessert a few of us headed to Victoriapark with TA Andrew to watch the sunset. Everyone else went back to the hotel to finish working on their projects. Watching the sunset from the top of the hill in a fortress was cool, especially since last time a group of us tried to watch it we missed the sunset completely due to getting lost.

I really enjoyed my day of solo exploring and I'll probably go off on my own again tomorrow, at least to go look at the rest of the museums. Exploring alone helped me get some good photos that won't look the same as everyone else's. It also gave me time to reflect on the city and the trip. I find that wandering around by yourself is the best way to discover a place. I can't believe we only have 2 more days here. I'm definitely planning on making the most of them. I'm going to come back and add pictures from today later, the wi-fi is being really slow and it would take hours to upload them all now.