Friday, December 25, 2009
Good morning, it’s Christmas! Woke up lazily, showered, prepared myself for the cold, and headed for East Side Gallery. East Side Gallery is a mile stretch or so of the original Berlin Wall that every year gets repainted by artists from around the world. It was incredible and my favorite part of Berlin. People are so creative and it always impresses how people can convey an emotion or a feeling through art. I’ve always wanted to be good at painting. Oh well. yeah, so it took us an hour or so to go through the whole Gallery. I didn’t care about the cold, this was worth it to me. Next stop was this incredible Chocolate Store we had passed by yesterday and Maria had told us would be open on Christmas. I made it my mission to find that store again. We walked ALL OVER Berlin to find it but we finally found it: Fassbender & Rausch. If anyone ever wants to buy me chocolate for any reason in the future please note the name of the store :D
I was in heaven, and it was at this moment I learned that Julia has a huge sweet tooth. Finally I’m not the only one. I ended up buying a box of chocolates that I got to hand pick. It was so difficult picking out each chocolate. I ran out of choices so I asked the girl helping me which one’s she recommended. I decided to save the box for later. But I did indulge in some individual wrapped Nugget chocolates that they had out in small round bins. OMG they were all heavenly. The store also built replicas of the famous monuments of Berlin out of chocolate, oh and they had a life size chocolate Santa hehe.
The chocolate store was very close to our next destination, the Christmas Market (again)! Well we first decided to go into the only open and free indoor attraction, the German church that was part of Genarmenmarkt. It was cool but all in German. We were able to find a few papers in English here and there but it was nice just to look and take things in. We saw a few videos and had one of the tour guides tell us some interesting facts a few times. It was a nice break from the cold. Screw the museum, it was time for lunch!
To the market we went. Everything looked so good i didn’t know where to start. Well we all wanted to try currywurst so we gave that a whirl. We all really like it. The sauce and spice they use was very good. They even cute it up for us in this little machine. After currywurst I indulged in a lovely mug of hot chocolate and ended up keeping the mug. They had about three varieties of mugs you could choose from but i think the one i ended up with was the best one. My first souvenir! Later on i tried this Nuremberg _______ bread thing. It was wheat bread with a spread on top and covered with chives and bacon bits. Oh lordy it was good, steaming hot too. After that i decided to stick to samples only. The Christmas Market was incredibly generous with there samples. You know sometimes you try a sample and you just feel so guilty that you end up buying something even if you didn’t want it. Not the case here. The people would just offer them up and if you just glanced at something they convinced you to try it. I tried numerous pieces of bread in different dipping sauces, cookies, apple chips, cheese, pancakes, and seasoned nuts.The samples were our lunch and part of our dinner.
Once it started getting dark (4:30pm) we headed off to the next Christmas Market and then to Alexanderplatz. I really wanted to see Alexplatz because part of the Born Ultimatum was filmed there. Well because of the Christmas market and man made ice skating rink it looked nothing like it did in the movie but i was glad i got to see it. At this market J-M got more gluihwein and Julia and I split this heavenly marshmallow treat. Hey, its vacation, I’m allowed to indulge a little, well a lot. It was a great Christmas. We were all on the same boat that we were glad to see Berlin with all the markets and lights. If we had just visited the city in the cold it might not have been AS worth it.
We headed back to rest a little and pack up our bags. This was our last day in Berlin. It was a short visit but it was amazing. I would have liked one more day to go into some of the places we had passed but other than that i had no regrets about out stay there. We wanted to finish up our stay in Berlin with one more traditional German meal. The hostel recommended this little pub on a corner. We all ordered the same meal because it sounded so good and it did not fail. It had a small salad, lentils, and these ravioli/potato filled pasta. Yumm. The nice thing was that it was light as apposed to the meal we had the day before. Julia was on a mission to find good strudel so we asked our server and he told us to try this little place named Snow White in German. we were expecting this little cafe that was close to closing but what we found was this incredibly modern and beautifully decorated restaurant. Everything was white with frosty windows, white lights, and an upscale modern feel to it. We were surrounded by dinner parties of friends all dressed up. Despite the decor the price for strudel and a bailey’s drink was quite reasonable. Our waiter insisted the strudel was enough for one maybe two people but the three of us decided to all split it. It was a good thing because it was massive. Again, no let downs, the strudel was very good.
We got back to the hostel at midnight, said goodbye to Ory, and called it a night. Once again the crazy man talked in his sleep all night long. Even though it was a relatively short stay in Berlin I thought we accomplished a whole lot and had a great time. Tomorrow its off to WEIN!
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