Once a year my mom, sister and I make an effort to do a “Girls Trip” with a set budget and one-two weeks of travel. This year we decided to do a two-week vacation trip to three countries in Europe. Our third destination was Berlin, Germany where we spent three days and rented an apartment via VRBO.
On our first day in Berlin we visited the Brandenburg Tor. The Brandenburg Tor is an 18 century neoclassical monument built under the orders of a Prussian King Fredrick William II. It was built on the site of a former city gate that marked the end of road the between Berlin and the town of Brandenburg an der Havel. Throughout history the Brandenburg Tor has been a site for many historical events but today it represents unity and peace.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a couple blocks down on the left side of the Brandenburg Tor. The monument is composed of 2,711 rectangular blocks that are laid out in a grid formation, which allows long straight and narrow alleys for visitors to walk through. The monument has been criticized over the years because it does not mention any names or labels the amount of victims killed and where they took place unlike many other memorials. However, architect Nicolai Ouroussoff claimed the memorial “is able to convey the scope of the Holocaust’s horrors without stooping to sentimentality-showing how abstraction can be the most powerful tool for conveying the complexities of human emotion.”
On the right side of the Brandenburg Tor is the Reichstag Building also known as Deutscher Bundestag. The Reichstag Building was the Parliament building and was opened in 1894 and in 1933 was severely damaged after being set on fire. On May 2, 1945 Yegency Khaldei took a photo raising a flag over the Reichstag building, symbolizing the victory of USSR over Germany. The building remained unused until the 1990s when it went under reconstruction. The Reichstag Building is the second most visited landmark in Germany attracting 3 million people a year.
On our second day in Berlin we went to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church. The original church on the site was built in the 1890s. It was badly damaged in a bombing raid in 1943. The damaged spire of the old church has been retained and its ground floor has been made into a memorial hall. The church today is a famous landmark of western Berlin and is nicknamed “de hohle Zahn” by Berliners which means “the hollow tooth.”
The Gendarmenmarkt square consists of three buildings. The first being the Konzerthaus, a concert hall and is the most recent building. It was built in 1821 under the name of Schauspielhaus. It was built on the ruins of the National Theatre, which was destroyed by a fire in 1817. The second and third buildings are French and German churches that are on either ends of the square. The French church also known as “The Franzosischer Dom” is the oldest building in the square. The Destscher Dom was built in 1708 and belonged to the Lutheran community. All three building were destroyed by fire during World War II and were later reconstructed. Today, The Gendarmenmarkt hosts one of Berlin’s most popular Christmas markets.
Our last day in Berlin turned out to be my mother’s birthday. In honor of her birthday she got to pick everything we would do on our last day. Naturally, we spent our last day shopping the malls and little boutiques. My mom’s favorite store was Lafayette, which reminded me of Harrods or Bloomindale’s. We knew during our trip that the last day would be our mom’s birthday so before we left for our trip we scheduled a dinner celebration. Our two cousins came in from England to celebrate the birthday and we went to Katz Orange also known as “Orange Cat.”
Originally going on this trip we thought Berlin would be the worst. However, Berlin had to be the best place we had visited so far on our trip. This cosmopolitan city offers picturesque architecture, edgy fashion, delicious food and welcoming people. I would definitely recommend going to this city when you get a chance on your next adventure.
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