After spending three and a half days in Paris, we arrived in
Hannover, Germany where Bridget's husband Karl was waiting for us. We explored Hannover a bit before heading to their home in
Hameln. In Hannover we experienced our first sausage dog from a walking cart and our first German beer!
We then went to Hameln (about an hour or so drive from Hannover) where we got settled into their super cute apartment for the night. The next day we visited Karl at his work, explored downtown Hameln, and had a very authentic German lunch. We loved downtown Hameln; it's such a neat city and is exactly what we pictured Germany to be.
Hameln is where the story of the
Pied Piper originated, so throughout the day the large church in downtown rings it's bells and the story of the Pied Piper is told through animation so we were able to see that while we were there.
Later that day we loaded up the car and headed to
Berlin for the next two nights. Upon arriving in Berlin, we checked into our hotel and then headed to the
Hackescher Market in the
Mitte area in East Berlin. We stumbled upon an awesome Spanish restaurant where we had dinner and rang in my birthday. It was a fantastic meal with great company and it couldn't have been a better start to my birthday!
The next day (on my actual birthday) we explored more of
East Berlin. It was freezing (we even had a few snow flurries), but somehow we managed to see the sites. We saw the The
Berliner Fernsehturm (German for "Berlin Television Tower"), which is also known to the locals as the "toothpick". We also saw the
Berliner Dom, the largest protestant church in Europe, which was beautiful!
We then made our way to the
Brandenburg Gate (the former city gate),
Checkpoint Charlie (the crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War), and the
Checkpoint Charlie Museum. The museum is in basically an older house and is kind of disorganized, but it has a lot of cool artifacts, photos, etc. in there. After, we found a cool bar (
Schwarze Café) where we had some great German beer to celebrate my birthday!
The next day I think was even colder, but we still ventured out to see all we could. We explored
West Berlin, which is completely different than East Berlin. West Berlin has a new, modern feel while East Berlin is a lot older and feels more industrial. This of course is because West Berlin got bombed badly during World World 2 and had to rebuild.
In West Berlin we got to see the
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It was cool because it has a ultra modern section that was added to the original church that was bombed during WWII, but still partially stands.
On the way out of Berlin we stopped in
Potsdam, a really cool , older city less than an hour from Berlin. It was neat to walk around to the different areas in Potsdam, one of which is known as the Dutch Quarter. We also got an awesome beer stein in Potsdam to serve as our memento from Germany.
After exploring Potsdam we headed back to Hameln where we had another nice dinner together, packed up and got ready to catch our flight the next morning. We had a fantastic trip. It was so great seeing Bridget and Karl in their new home and explore new cities with them. They were fantastic hosts and we really appreciated their hospitality. We can't wait to see them again soon!
You can view all of our Germany pictures
here.
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