Berlin Trip #3

It seems like only yesterday that I was blogging about Berlin trip #1 and here we are on Berlin trip #3. This time, however, it was on a school trip. The weird thing was it was not with my school. My host sister goes to the Hochschule in Magdeburg and her school organized this trip to the German Historical Museum. Somehow she got me on the list so I got to go to Berlin for free and got free admittance to the Berlin Historical Museum. Score! We actually started the day in Berlin at the Deutsche Bahn (DB) headquarters and got to learn about what DB is currently focusing on. Deutsche Bahn is what you are riding on if you ride a train in Germany. It was all very interesting. I tried to follow along but could not understand everything. They speak so fast and use big words! If I didn't know any better, I would say these people have been speaking German their entire life. While we were given this presentation on DB, we were way up in the DB tower in Berlin which gave us  really good view of the city. We also got these neat pens with flashlights on them. Everyone loves a free pen. After we were done at DB we went to the German Historical Museum where we were given a short tour through the museum. I, of course, tried to follow along and understood some of what he was saying. I did, at one point, really embarrass myself when the tour guide asked what a patriot was and I accidentally gave the definition of an expatriate. Ahhhh I felt so stupid. I could feel my face turning red. I could just tell what the other people were saying "Who's that weird exchange student answering questions completely wrong?" Haha oh well, in my defense I answered in German and learned a very valuable lesson that day. I highly recommend the German Historical Museum. All the displays are in German and English.

View of Berlin from the Deutsche Bahn headquarters tower.

Another view of the city.

Holocaust Memorial 

Brandenburg Gate 

German Historical Museum

Christmas market by the Fernsehturm 

After the German Historical Museum we visited a couple of the Christmas markets (Berlin has many). We ended the day in the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station). It is something to behold, especially around Christmas when it is all lit up. The train station is like a huge mall that just happens to have trains coming in and out of it all day.

The Berlin main train station.