To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Hallo, meine Damen und Herren!

It was another great weekend abroad.  This past weekend we spent our time in the large and in charge city of Berlin.  

The trip started off a little rocky for me personally.  We took a bus that was similar to a charter bus, minus the bathroom.  Which brings me to my next point.  Anyone who knows me well knows that I always have to pee, and I get motion sickness very easily!  With this in mind I managed to only drink a tiny tiny coffee with breakfast, a sip or two of water, and go pee right before I left our dorms.  We get on the road and all is great.  The bus driver says that he will take a break at the two hour mark.  About an hour in I feel like I'm going to pee on myself.  I quickly turned into that little kid in the backseat who manages to ask "are we there yet?" every 5 minutes.  I have a little pow-wow with myself... "Self, you can do this!! Just a little farther!"  On the edge of my seat with my face buried in the seat in front of me, I wait.  Whitney and Autumn realize my pain and tell me to ask the bus driver to pull over.  What do I do?  I start crying my eyes out just like I did on many trips to Florida as a child.  Being the friend Autumn is she tells John about the issue and is told that we have to wait until the two hour mark.  They are laughing at me, but in a nice way, if that makes sense.  About two and a half hours in we finally stop and all is well, but let me tell you that was miserable!! 

Along with all of that I managed to get a bit car sick, but I wasn't going to dare drink another sip of water to down my Dramamine, so after we stopped I took one which knocked me out the remainder of the trip.

Once we arrived we broke off into groups of six per room.  In my room it was Autumn, Whitney, Allie, Morgan, Kristen, and me.  Our room basically consisted of four bunk beds, lockers, and a terrible shower.  We made it work though! We got settled in and then hopped back on the bus for a short tour.  It was raining and cold so we just did the little bit of site seeing from the bus.  We stopped at an Asian restaurant where you pick what type of stir fry you want to eat and then they cook it right in front of you.  It was very yummy!  It wasn't long before we were back at the hostile and out for the night. 

The next morning we woke up for breakfast and we were off to our walking tour. We spent a good three hours walking around in the freezing, windy, rainy city of Berlin. It was very interesting though. I will take you through some of our stops:

The Berlin Wall which went up after World War II separated east and west Germany.  It came down in November of 1989.  Everywhere that the Berlin Wall once stood they placed this long strip of cobblestone for remembrance.   

The Brandenburg Gate is the only remaining gate of a series through which Berlin was once entered.  Due to all of the damage it encountered during World War II, it was restored between 2000-2002.

Hotel Adlon.  You might be asking yourself why this is important.  Well to my understanding it is just very very expensive, and where the celebrities stay.  You might remember when Micheal Jackson dangled his baby over the balcony... well that was at this hotel.  This is also where the Mavericks were staying this past weekend.  A couple of my friends actually saw Dirk Nowitzki signing autographs.  

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe, The Holocaust Memorial.  The memorial is 19,000 square meters and is covered with 2,711 concrete slabs arranged in a grid like pattern.  The memorial designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and aims to represent a ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. 

After we finished up the tour we headed to a mall that had the best store in the world.  Ladies it was a European-ized Forever 21!  It is called Primark, and they have everything you could ever want for the best prices ever!  We spend a lot of time there.  Finally caught a subway and packed all of our shopping bags back to our hostile. We did damage for sure.

Yes Autumn has more things inside the suitcase, which she also bought. :)

After watching each person reveal their purchases one by one (like Christmas) we then ordered pizza and got ready for the nightlife.  Lisa and Caroline had told us about a really fun club called Matrix so that's where we were headed.  After playing beauty salon it wasn't long before we were on our way.  Yet again we hop on the subway and shortly after we were there.  The club had two different rooms.  They played pretty good music and we all managed to have a good time leaving sweaty and tired! 

The next morning we had another bus tour.  Being the sports lover I am I was super excited to see that one of our stops was the Olympic Stadium.  

Just preparing for Rio, 2016

Our next stop was Schloss Charlottenburg.  We basically just looked around the gift shop and played around outside. 

Next, we went to see a section of the Berlin Wall the is still up.  It was very neat to be able to see something I had read about all through school. 

After our tour, we went to the Ritter Sport store! Holy cow it was awesome.  We made our own chocolate while also searching through tons and tons to buy.  Mine was the perfect mix of dark chocolate, raspberry crisps, raisins  and sugar coated almonds.  

It goes on and on and on...

Then we headed back to Primark because some girls didn't get a chance to go and I had to exchange my coat. We all managed to pick up a few more things while we were there.  Afterward we went to eat an amazing, but super expensive Mexican restaurant.  By the time we made it back to our hostile we were dead. 

The next morning we had until noon to get packed up before we had to be on our way back to Regensburg. A few of us decided to go to the zoo, while the others decided to hang out at Starbucks   Sara, Will, Morgan, Paige, and I went to the zoo! It was AWESOME! One of the highlights of the trip.  It was the only time it didn't rain, and since we were there so early it was like we had the whole zoo to our self. I did have my hopes up to finally see a real panda bear, but it turns out is happened to die in August. :( The rest of the zoo was amazing though, explains why it is number 1 in Europe!

I'll start with all of my monkey videos:

This first one wanted to do a little flip for the camera--

This next one thought the window tasted nice--

This next video was my favorite!! This baby monkey had so much energy the whole time and the momma just kept trying to get it to calm down haha--

This next video is of a seal that made us all laugh!--

Here are a few more of  my favorite pictures from the zoo, but if you want to see the rest you can find them on my facebook page.

The baby elephant was so adorable.

I had to resort to the fake donation box panda.

Berlin was a great city, I really loved it. I would love to go back and enjoy more of the city someday.

I arrived back in Regensburg to find that I now have a roommate.  I have never shared a bathroom with another male other than my brother, so I don't have very high expectations for Johannes, but I love surprises.  He is super friendly, and I hope that he is super clean too. 

Have a great week!! 

Sumer 

"He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled." -Joshua 24-17