Class trip to Berlin

I visited Berlin for the first time this weekend. One of my classes was doing research on behalf of Columbia University so we were given a University subsidized trip to Berlin. The whole experience was a real whirlwind. We left Konstanz around 6:30 Friday night and arrived in Berlin around 7 the next morning. It was my first time traveling such a great distance by train, and that was half the fun. We stayed in a sleeper car. My room was myself and 5 other guys from class. Lets just say we didn't get much sleep and that the cleaning service had quite a few bottles to pick up in the morning. We arrived in Berlin so early that we couldn't find anywhere to get breakfast, so we wandered around until about 9 when places started to serve. After which I got to explore the city until 2pm. The city is great, it is covered in the best graffiti I've ever seen.

The Rally itself was in relation to Climate Change. I was more interested in getting the research done and having free time to really pay much attention to the causes at hand. It was just nice following the rally and seeing the sights of Berlin.

That night I went out with a couple of friends to bars and clubs. Before coming to Europe I never went to clubs, but since I've been here I've been to clubs in Zürich and Berlin and I love them. They are nothing like I expected. I could go just to listen to the djs they are so talented, they actually play music and don't just spin records. One of the guys I was with is a bit of a mess. He is 24, balding, tends to look dirty and is always disheveled. The first club we went to refused to allow him in, which meant that the other guy and myself had to go with him, not because the club didn't want us, but because we couldn't leave a man behind. The next club we barely got into because of him. We figured we should just stay there and avoid risking this guys getting us denied in the future.

We didn't sleep. We got back to the hostel at 8am, and had to catch a 9:40 train home. The train ride lasted 10 hours. We covered almost the entire country. If you want to see what my route looked like get our your atlas and connect the cities: Berlin-> change in Hannover-> pauses in Frankfurt & Offenburg ->change in Baden-Baden ->Konstanz. It was hellish. It didn't help that Germany is just one gigantic plain. The country is beautiful but boring, the only true highlight is the Black Forest, but we got there at sunset and missed most of it. I'm flying next time.