As part of the International Undergraduate Studies Program at Philipps Universität Marburg, Germany, we were given the opportunity to spend a long weekend in Berlin. Leaving on Thursday, October 2 and returning on Sunday, October 5, we had two group tours and plenty of time to explore the city and enjoy the Berlin atmosphere.
The reason that we were able to leave class early and spend three days in Berlin was the public holiday, the Day of German Unity, on October 3. This holiday celebrates the reunification of Germany in 1990, at the end of the Cold War. As our tour guide told us, the day most people actually remember is November 9th, 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, but this unfortunately occurred on the anniversary of a much more sinister German historical event: Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, in 1938. Because of this, they chose instead to celebrate the day reunification was officially completed. This did not prevent us from spending hours that day touring memorial sites of the Berlin Wall, of course.
Perhaps our biggest discovery in Berlin was our visit to the Bundestag. Having been to Berlin twice before, including spending a week there this summer studying the memorialization of the Holocaust, this is one of the few major landmarks I hadn’t been inside. The entrance security feels a bit like a US airport, but the atmosphere once inside is actually very relaxed. I was especially interested in decades-old graffiti left on the walls in Russian – while some of the more aggressive language was removed, the government decided to keep what they could of the graffiti for art’s and history’s sake. I can’t imagine such a thing happening at the Parliament in Victoria! We also got to sit inside the main debate room of the Lower House, complete with giant eagle model. The experience was a bit surreal.
Touring Berlin on bicycle
Something I never thought I’d do in Berlin was rent a bicycle and ride around aimlessly for seven hours, but that’s how many of us spent the afternoon after our city tour. I was shocked that helmets weren’t even available, but the woman renting us our bikes said we “wouldn’t need one” because of the holiday. I failed to see the connection between the two things, but luckily, there were no injuries in our group. By bike, it’s possible to see everything you could want to see in Berlin in one afternoon, and we rode by the Cathedral of Berlin, the main university buildings, the Spree River, the Bebelplatz book-burning memorial, the East Side Gallery, the Brandenburg Gate, and much more. We also stopped for incredible Vietnamese food along the way. If you’re looking for a variety of ethnic foods that more or less compares with Vancouver in Germany, Berlin is the place to be.