Today was my first full day in Berlin so I thought I would have a slow morning and then get acquainted with the city. Turns out that it’s not really very easy to get ‘acquainted’ with an expansive city that has a population of 3.5 million! I got off at the main U-bahn station and somehow ended up in a huge shopping centre! It was alright because I bought a pastry for breakfast which turned out to be a cookie mixture on top of pastry (not the nutritious apple pastry I thought I was buying!). I then proceeded to wonder around lost for about an hour. I saw the Fernsehturm Berlin tower which is the tallest structure in Berlin but I didn’t go inside since the line was super long! After feeling a bit lost and a bit overwhelmed to be honest since I had come from Ljubljana and Bled where I was staying within a 1km of all the major sites, and suddenly I was having to negotiate trains and the U-bahn and lots of people, I decided to head back to the hostel to work out what I was doing and where I was going! I went via Lidl (Aldi) to grab some supplies which resulted in me setting off the alarm by trying to pack my groceries into my basket (like I do at home!) and then being yelled up by the cashier in German. Not my most fabulous morning yet!

At the hostel I took some time to relax and lay down on my bed for a while since I slept really badly the night before! At about 2:30pm I got up and decided I would head to the Berlin Wall Memorial which was only a 1.7km walk from the hostel (i.e. I didn’t have to work out the U-bahn again). I wrote out every single instruction so I wouldn’t get lost again and managed to get there successfully, passing lots of cute little cafes and shops along the way.

The Berlin Wall Memorial site was fascinating. I spent a long time in the exhibition which detailed the history of the wall, of which I had very little knowledge beforehand. I found it hard to believe that it had all happened so recently! They had lots of personal recounts from people living in Berlin at the time which were all really interesting as well as pictures and items from the time. The most interesting ones (and some of the saddest) were the escape stories. I then walked around the Remembrance Park and along the remains of the wall, as well to the Chapel of Reconciliation which stands where the old Church of Reconciliation stood before it was destroyed by the GDR during the time of the wall.

I headed back in the direction of the hostel and stopped by to get a few groceries I had forgotten in the morning before getting incredibly lost all over again, despite the fact it should have been easy to follow my directions backwards! After a thorough ‘exploration’ of the hostel’s neighbourhood, I found my way back. Back at the hostel I chatted to some Australians while I cooked my dinner in the communal kitchen and then we sat around outside in the Garden for a couple of hours eating dinner and then chatting. There were heaps of Australians at the hostel that night from nearly every capital city! After a while I headed up to bed.