Blog 7 Hallo Form Berlin Part 1

This week we were scheduled to go to Berlin for our CDC class trip this was unfortunately cancelled due to the recent pandemic. Still, i decided to go on the trip. It was a tough choice, but I kind of knew I was going to go anyways. My dad said if they cancel your flight home find your way to Rotterdam and you can get a ride with one of our suppliers delivering goods in us in Ireland. That sounded pretty fun to be a bad scenario, I also didn't like the fact of just letting an already paid for trip to the German capital go by me. On a serious note though this was a tough decision, I assessed what I could of the situation, and though it was safe for me to go so I did and I'm so happy, I went. Tag 1 The first day was travelling we fly Dublin to Schoenefeld on another brilliant Ryanair flight. I just love all the extra legroom, tv and free food they give me. I'm their biggest fan! Lol, not my biometrics are just not quite what they planes are built for leaving me usually uncomfortable for all their flights I take. Still, the price keeps bringing me back :/ Arrived anyways had some dinner and had a nice little tour of the city centre by our tour guides for the week David and jack. We just couldn't tell them they were our tour guides or they would get mad. Got back to the hostel early as we had a big day planned for day two. Tag 2 Tuesday morning we woke and headed off to get to know the city a bit better, firstly stopping at the central station. As a small bit of a train enthusiast, this place was right up my alley, I knew the Germans were competent engineers, but this place blew my mind away. The architectural and structural engineering was immense. There were multiple levels of train platforms below us, and above us running in all directs i couldn't really figure out how were they not all crashing. After we headed south of the station to the Berlin cube, an office space just nearing completion its a glass box with parts of the structure extruding out and in at different angles giving the building an interesting look with the daylight reflecting off it. Every side I looked at this cube building; it was different with different lighting and shadows. It was probably one of the coolest modern building I saw on the trip. We continued to head south passing the monstrous Neo-Baroque Reichstag building it was amazing. After we proceeded to the Brandenburg Gate and then onto the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe the area was filled with 2711 concrete slabs in a maze-like puzzle. It was built by Peter Eisenman in 1999. The slabs were placed on land that was sloping into the middle as I walked further into the centre the slab grew up upon my and were eventually powering over me. Walking through the rows of these slabs was kind of surreal, you were just left there feeling lost and hopeless with not much meaning which lots of Jewish people around the world were felling at the time of the war. Under these slabs was a small exhibition of letters, pictures and stories from Jewish people during the war years. The rooms were dark, and an eerie silence filled every room it was deep stuff. This was a really well-designed memorial it always made u lost at every point of it. We made our way back into the city centre then and headed to the DDR Museum. This was an interactive museum where there was a lot of touching and picking up stuff, so I was a bit sceptical about it with the virus. Nevertheless, we made our way around it. The propaganda was interesting and cool to see. The products in the museum were very minimal quiet simple, and well designed. Finally, we stumbled across an illusions museum on the way back to the hostel. This was really fun and interactive. It was one of the best museums we went to on the trip. It really opened up my eyes to how something can look totally different if you just look at it from a different angle.

Stay Tuned for the rest of the trip!!