Merry Christmas to everybody from Berlin, Germany:) We decided to take advantage of our close proximity to so many other European countries by spending our Christmas in Berlin. There are two discount airlines out of Italy (Ryan Air and Easy Jet) so we just hopped on a flight that was the most reasonable for Christmas time travel, and here we are in Germany. It was a short flight, about 2 hours, and Evan did great on the plane, kicking off a great start to our vacation..ummm..I mean, 'holiday', since I've learned the Europeans go on 'holiday', not on 'vacation'.
We arrived in Berlin the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and were greeted by a snow covered airport---yeah...Evan's first Christmas will be a white one:) We hopped in our rental car (a brand new Audi hatchback..all the cars here seem to be hatchbacks), and cruised off to our hotel. Our hotel is in the Mitte district of Berlin, a major historical area in former "East Berlin", within walking distance to "Checkpoint Charlie", Brandenburg Gate, remaining standing sections of the Berlin wall, and several other museams, memorials, cathedrals etc. We are also within walking distance to both Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts (this point of interest isn't listed out in the hotel brochure, but it is definitely worth mentioning in my mind:).
We've been keeping busy since we got here--a necessary thing to keep our legs moving to stay warm! Naples has such mild winters, that we've become wimps, so we've had to be sure to layer up, and drink plenty of the hot rum cider offered at each of the 27 Christmas villages/festivals taking place throughout Berlin. The first night we got here, Christmas Eve, we ventured just 4 blocks from our hotel to check out the xmas village, "Gendarmenmarkt". It was so pretty and festive. It consisted of hundreds of booths, selling everything from winter-wear such as scarves, furry hats, and gloves, jewelry, puppets, ornaments and lots of food-goulash, bratwursts, waffle desserts, spiced wines and ciders, beers, and various other german foods which looked and smelled delicious, but I'm not sure what they were. Lots of folks were walking around w/ some sort of flatbread that had cheese and bacon poured on it...maybe a German style grilled cheese, and there were also lots of fried potato pancake type things smothered in toppings that looked like sour cream...maybe I'll have to try one tonight. We've been having at least one Bratwurst each day, great goulash, and last night for dessert we splurged for the hot waffle smothered in chocolate and whipped cream that we ate as we walked around the festival.
On Christmas Day we decided to hop on a city tour bus to see all the major sites. It was a hop on/hop off bus, so we hopped off to spend some time at Brandenburg Gate, one of the checkpoints between East and West Berlin. It is huge and very impressive. In fact, all the architecture here is pretty amazing...from the monuments, to individual statues, to massive buildings decorated w/ huge amounts of detail. We also attended a Christmas Mass at the "Berliner Dom", a beautiful cathedral down the street from our hotel. Since the songs and everything were all in German, we couldn't understand much, but surprisingly, we could follow somewhat in our programs, since German is an AngloSaxon language. As a 'cousin' language to English, there are enough similarities between the languages to figure out some words. For example, I bet you can guess what this was from our church mass "ehr sei dem Vater und dem Sohn und dem Heiligen Geist" (just email me for the answer:) ha!)
Today is the '2nd day of Christmas' in Germany, so most stores are closed again in recognition of the holiday. We decided to take a 40 minute drive out to the town of Potsdam, considered "Prussia's Wonderland". Potsdam is listed as a World Heritage Site by the UN because of it's fascinating history, but also because of it's incredibly picturesque setting..sprawling with palaces, lakes, manicured gardens, statues and huge parks. It's so picturesque that I forgot to take pictures...ooops!. We did really enjoy our exploration of that town though, mainly checking out Sancoussi Palace==which was the palace of Frederick the Great.
Once back in Berlin, we stopped off at the hotel to feed Evan, grabbed some Brats (again) for ourselves, and walked down to Check-point Charlie-- another one of the key gates splitting East and West Berlin. They have a whole wall outlining the history of the Berlin Wall and this check point...Check-point Charlie being one of the more well-known border crossings after ther Berlin Wall went up. The history is so interesting, and it's hard to believe that the Berlin Wall existed in such recent history, and that the wall finally came down when I was 16 years old. There is now a path made out of bricks from the Berlin Wall that outlines where the wall once stood throughout the city. Kind of like the red freedom trail in Boston.
Berlin has been a pleasant surprise to us...surpassing our expectations of this city. I pictured it to feel cold, stark and Stalin-esque, but instead it is a great mix of the old and new. The old buildings are impressive in size and embellishment, the city is clean and orderly, with lots of pretty parks and green space, and the food is great:)
Some of the things we are enjoying in Berlin, especially in contrast to Naples:
-Berlin is so quiet compared to Naples
-Very clean and orderly city.
-Lots of parks and green space
-Light traffic (although it is the holidays, so hard to say what a normal week is like, but compared to Naples, the streets seem deserted).
-A lot more protein in the German diet. Brats, sausages, pork etc,
-I've seen and heard more Americans in my 2 days in Berlin, than in my 3 weeks in Naples.
-A lot of Western stores, restaurants and brands: Starbucks (I've seen 3 just in the area around my hotel and haven't seen one in Naples..not even at the airport), Dunkin Donuts (have seen 2 so far), TJ Maxx (I had not expected them to be international), McDonalds & Burger King (both hard to find in Naples), H&M--over 25 of this clothing chain in Berlin alone, Firestone tires, etc.
-Hardly any mopeds..although still a lot of small cars, hatchbacks, and deisel powered cars.
I'll be sure to post pictures once we get back to Naples...I forgot the adapter for my camera.
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