Willkomen to Berlin! Hello everyone and sorry for being a day late on posting in this blog! It has been so hectic lately and we had such a packed day today, its barely given me any time to get on my laptop and crank something out for all of you to read! Today was our first full day in Germany (and Berlin) and it has been nothing but fun and exciting!

The day started out with the group finally getting to sleep in (yay!). It was definitely needed after such a long train ride last night and not getting to the hotel until at least midnight or a little afterwards. The train ride went incredible well, despite the length of time that we spent on it and the constant swaying back and forth as we traveled through Germany. We got to sleep in until 8:15AM (a very late time for all of us lately), where we were greeted with a REAL breakfast that didn’t just include a croissant and coffee, and then we all piled into the new coach in order to greet our tour guide Kevin for the day while taking a bus tour around the city. Kevin was incredibly witty and intelligent, the lot of us unable to stop from laughing at every joke he cracked. The man did know so much however, and we ended up learning so much about Germany today, and Germany during the times of World War II. We stopped to look at the Holocaust monument that was built to memorialize the Jews who died during the time of Nazi Germany, and of course the famous Berlin Wall.

Though most of the Wall is gone now, there still remains a long strip of it, which was created into “The East Berlin Gallery.” The East Berlin Gallery is made up of artists from all around the world who were asked to come and present artwork on one panel of the wall. The art work that we saw was stunning and beautiful, most keeping the subject of unity and peace in mind. It was a solumn moment to look at that Wall, and it was sad that we were only able to walk by it for a few short minutes, mostly due to an illegal parking job that we did to get up close to it. After visiting the Wall, we then traveling across Germany and visited Checkpoint Charlie, a sign showing the actual check point that the Americans used. From there, we went through a museum explaining the escapes that people used to cross the Wall and the casualties that ended along with it.

After everything was said and done on the itinerary, we were all pretty much allowed to do whatever we pleased. The majority of us broke away and decided to explore the city a little more on our own. Some of us went through the streets where many shops were displayed, and others went to look at the historical buildings that still stood from the days of World War II and until now. We passed by vendors selling pretzels and bratwurst and they were always so hard to pass up. We met for dinner shortly afterwards and enjoyed a nice long buffet of mystery meat, mystery soup, bread, and rum rice cake. Again, another meal on the tour that didn’t disappoint. I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed Berlin, the thought of going to Germany not really on my ‘most exciting part of the tour’ list. But I was definitely proven wrong by the beauty of the city, how clean it was, and how nice the locals were. It definitely proved to be a place that is worth coming back to in the very near future.

And now for the fun part. As many of you may know, this year is FIFA World Cup 2010. As you may also know, Europe tends to take soccer extremely seriously. So I can speak for the group and say that we were completely excited to learn that we were going to be in Europe during the month of World Cup, AND be here during the famous rivalry game of USA vs England. A lot of us decided that after dinner, we were going to put on our World Cup gear, and head over to the Olympia Stadium to watch the game with all the other diehard footballer fans. And that is actually what we did. Not only were we excited to see the game, but we were stoked to be standing right in front of a piece of American history. Germany hosted the Summer Olympics back in 1936; right at this very stadium that was hosting the World Cup fan fest. Our African American sprinter Jesse Owens ran right past Hitler’s group of Arian runners, winning the gold metal in front of the Germans and Hitler. It was and still is glorious and brings a smile to all of our faces.

The English and Americans were definitely going at it – though in a good way. No fights broke out, thank goodness, however there was plenty of trash talk and many chants of “Lets Go England” and “U-S-A!” It was great to think that we were getting to experience something like this over in Europe, something that we may never get to experience ever again. The game ended up being brilliant, the English and Americans ending up with a 1-1 tie. All the fans wished each other luck and shook hands, making friends with each other after rooting on their own respective teams and speaking their minds. Tomorrow should surely be interesting, where we will be in Munich getting to see Germany play Australia. Though the turn out was pretty nice for the England vs USA game, we were predicting some mad amount of fans tomorrow night. We already can’t wait! And I can’t wait to write tomorrow to fill you all in on more of our adventures. Have a good night friends and parents!