Easter break in Germany

As part of my Easter vacation I spent 8 days in Germany. I went to Munich, Berlin and Potsdam, which is a city close to Berlin. I had an awesome experience, mostly travelling on my own, meeting up with friends and meeting new people!

So at first I started my journey on a low-cost airline and before I knew it I was landing at Memmingem airport. What I didn’t know however, was that the bus trip to Munich was going to take an hour and a half. Not the end of the world though and when I arrived in Munich my South African friend, Nico, was there to meet me! We had an awesome time together exploring Munich and on the second night we went on a Beer Challenge/Pub Crawl organised by New Europe. We visited Augustiner Brauhaus, as well as the Hofbrauhaus. This was an awesome experience. What makes Munich and the rest of Bavaria awesome is that the people there are still quite traditional and it’s not weird for them going out in their traditional lederhosen. That was really really awesome as we saw some well-dressed gentleman and ladies! The biggest party happened in the Euro Youth Hostel Pub, where the Beer Challenge ended. This was also the hostel we were staying in. The next morning I had to get up early to catch the bus to Berlin, while Nico was heading to Dubai to visit friends.

So after an eight and a half hour bus ride I arrived in Berlin. Eight and a half hours on a bus was at least not as bad as I expected and I got to see more of Germany, even though it meant just passing through. So arrived in Berlin all alone, but luckily the hostel I was staying in was really easy to find. There I met one of my dorm-mates, Ahmed from Egypt. The next day the two of us went on a free city tour, but halfway through we were so cold we returned to the hostel. I then decided to go find a shopping centre, not that I had any money to spend, but at least it was warm! Then it randomly started to snow! On Saturday night an American guy, Drew, arrived in our dorm, so Sunday the two of us went exploring once again. With no trace of the previous day’s snow and the sun shining we walked and walked and walked and saw everything awesome, returning to the hostel with sore feet. I would highly recommend a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Site and the museum under it to anyone visiting Berlin! That was definitely a the biggest highlight of all the sites I saw and very moving. By the time we got back to the hostel another Egyptian, Sherif, had arrived. He is a friend of Ahmed’s and, of course, in true Egyptian style we found a shisha bar (hubbly for the South Africans, or hookah for anyone else) and each smoked a pipe. They taught me how to blow smoke rings and shared all their shisha secrets, so I’m a pro now! Dan, my friend from New Zealand, arrived on Monday and on Monday night we went to the shisha bar again.

So then on Tuesday morning I bid Berlin, and my new-found friends, goodbye and went to visit Julianne in her hometown of Potsdam. We spent the day exploring the streets and sights of Potsdam and later the day Dan also joined us. The night we went to dinner with Julianne’s German friends and also celebrated one of her friends’ birthday with her. Wednesday led to more exploring and doing random things like taking silly pictures and falling of random turning chairs in parks (right Julianne?). We ended the day playing Rock Band on Wii and having dinner with her mom and brother. Potsdam was definitely my favourite city on the trip and I would recommend a visit to it if any of you ever end up in Germany!

Thursday morning we woke up at 4:10 to catch our plane back to Belgium. Since we were so tired we didn’t pay much attention to the trains when we arrived in Brussels and ended up taking the train that takes almost 2 hours to get to Gent since it stops about 15 times! Finally we made it home and it was good to be back in Gent!

So last night I attended the birthday of the Parochiaal Centrum PAX in Aalter where Lieven lives. Had good food, met the parents (and the rest of Aalter) and had a good laugh at Lieven on a video they made for the birthday of the centre. Just a shame my camera's battery was dead, otherwise I could've had some incriminating evidence! All in all I would say I had a pretty awesome Easter break. Plus it’s awesome to have proper frietjes (Belgian fries) after a 40 day Lent fasting!