Berlin is a really wonderful city and I’m so glad I was able to spend two weeks here. I wish I could stay here for a bit longer. I feel like I got a good feel for the city for the short time I was there. I would definitely visit this city again, and probably will during my internship, since its only a 4 hour train ride.
Here are some pictures from Berlin. We went to a number of places, including the Spree River, many parts of the Berlin Wall, the historical Parliament area, the Tiergarten, Grunewald Forest, Tempelhof Park, the city model museum, the Potsdam castles including Sanssouci Park, Berlin Botanical Garden, and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.
The concentration camp in particular was a very jolting experience. I think many people have a certain expectation of how they may react when they go to a concentration camp – and it’s definitely not what they expected.
Sachsenhausen was represented in a way that was not masked by anything or overshadowed – it just was. There were information panels, but mostly it was about experiencing the physical features of the space for yourself.
After Berlin, we travelled to Essen by train, which only took four hours. In comparison to America, both Germany and China have much more comfortable trains. Essen is much more suburban than Berlin, which is an interesting change. I personally enjoy the ease of going outside of the apartment and having everything you need right there in Berlin better than Essen, but it is still fairly easy with public transportation.
Auf Wiedersehen, look out for an update in a few days!
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