This was an absolutely amazing weekend! So good! Renee and I began our journey in Utrecht where we had been able to get a ride with someone to Berlin. It was quite a ride - particularly when we got to the autobahn, which doesn't really have a speed limit. We drove 170km/h at times - and people were still passing us! Craziness.
We got to Berlin at 12:00am Thursday morning, arriving at our hostel around 1:00. I wasn't expecting the hostel to be so big, but it housed 300 people, which I thought was quite a few! It was quite nice, and for €15 we had a bed with breakfast included. Very nice.
On Thursday we were able to go on a free tour of Berlin, which was also nice and cheap :), and we enjoyed that quite a bit too. We saw a whole lot of Berlin on foot (like the Brandenburg gate, checkpoint Charlie, the parliament buildings, and a whole lot of other historic places), and also got the explanations and stories with it. Before our tour we'd met a lady from Hawaii who was also staying at our hostel, and we hung out with her for the day. In the afternoon we went to the Jewish museum, which was quite interesting - as well as HUGE! It was different than I'd expected - I would've thought it would have more of a Holocaust theme, but it was more about the history of the Jews - but it was still quite neat to see.
At night we went to the parliament buildings, where you can walk around a huge dome at the top (for free!) and get a beautiful view of Berlin. That was nice to do as well.
Friday was more relaxed in berlin - we visited the broken church, rode the metro, rode the metro some more, visited a larger portion of the Berlin wall, and once again rode the metro.
Part of the Berlin Wall
Friday afternoon we headed to Marburg, where Peter, a former exchange student that Renee knew, lived. Marburg was definitely one of the highlights of my entire stay in Europe! It's beautiful there, and we had such good deep conversations with Peter and his roomate Volker, as well as some friends that were staying there that weekend. Volker, as well as a few of the other people there had been to Israel for a year, and picked up on some of their customs, and were celebrating the Messianic Passover that weekend. The house smelled so good the whole time we were there. It was really special to celebrate the passover with them, and it was made even more special by the fact that there had been Jews who celebrated Passover in this house before, and during, the holocaust. Our time there was just amazing, and it's really hard to describe. It was just really good.
Volker preparing the Mazzah ball soup
After the meal
View of Marburg
Our trip home was also quite amazing. We had a ride home with an atheist guy from Marburg, and had a huge discussion about God, and why we believe for the majority of the trip - about 3 hours of our trip. It was so amazing. I don't think I've ever had an experience quite like that before in my life. It was awesome!
Journeying Home
So, yeah... that was my trip in it's briefest form. It was quite good, and I'm really glad we went. We were definitely supposed to be there. God is so good!
2 comments:
did you go in the museum at checkpoint charlie? I enjoyed berlin for it's history but I wasn't so thrilled with the city-ness of it.
was the passover anything like what we do at home?
I didn't go in the checkpoint charlie museum, b/c our tour guide said it wasn't really worth it, and he told us some of the stories we'd see in there anyway... I definitely agree with the city-ness - not a huge fan.
The main difference with this passover was that it was in German and Hebrew, instead of English and Hebrew... but it was a lot easier to follow b/c I'd been to the one at your house. I still have the liturgy - I kept it so I could show you :)
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