Berlin, Germany
The next stop on our tour was the capital of Germany: Berlin.

Despite having been divided and patrolled for more than three decades, post-Soviet Berlin has returned with a vengeance. The city that was once the most policed place in the world is now a global hub for art, culture, music, and nightlife.
We stayed in old East Berlin, near where the wall used to stand. While the western part of the city has many glass and steel buildings that have set the cutting edge in architecture, the east has more buildings of historical importance. Our hotel was just east of Brandenburg Gate, which is right in the center of the city.

From there, we were able to tour the city’s most historic sights, including: the Reichstag (the seat of German parliament); the Tiergarten (Berlin’s Central Park);

a section of the Berlin Wall that’s still standing;

and the city’s Holocaust memorial.

As Berlin was at the center of much of 20th century history, there are no shortage of sights of significance from the pre-war, Nazi, and Soviet eras.

The next day, we went on a tour of Alternative Berlin and got a glimpse into the city’s artistic, seedy underbelly. In the years following Soviet withdrawal from East Germany, anarchist collectives began settling into abandoned buildings. While the size and scope of the squatters’ communities have been shrinking in recent years, some sections of Berlin are still covered in the street art that these communities created.

Berlin also boats the world’s largest outdoor art exhibit — a series of murals painted on a reconstruction of the wall known as the East Side Gallery.

Murals are constantly being painted by some of the most renowned street artists in the world.


We capped off our Berlin adventures by having some local fast food. We stopped by Curry at the Wall for some currywurst — chopped up sausage covered in curry and served just feet from the old Berlin Wall. We also visited TERAS Restaurant to get a delicious kebab at Angela Merkel’s favorite kebab shop. While kebabs can now be found all over the world, they first became famous in Berlin when a large number of Turkish immigrants started serving them up to hungry Germans.
Berlin was a young, fun city, and we enjoyed the blend of sobering history and wild nightlife that no other city can match.