BERLIN

Sorry Amsterdam, but you held the honor of being my favorite city in Europe for about 48 hours. That is, until I got to Berlin. Take everything I liked about Amsterdam and multiply it by ten, then take away all the negative aspects of Amsterdam, add more history and more people... that will give you Berlin. This city rocks the socks off of Europe. I now understand why Gabriel got the heck out of London and has been living here for the past decade. I thought that the ghost of its past would make this city somewhat uncomfortable to be in, but I was wrong. There is so much history here, and that can be a bit eerie sometimes (I’ll talk details about what the Nazis left behind in a later post). But overall, this city is so much fun and has so much culture.

I’ve been looking forward to Berlin since I joined this team last year, and it has not disappointed. This is going to be an awesome week. I am, however, trying to prepare myself for the horrors I’m going to see in both Germany and Poland. We’re going to multiple concentration camps and different locations of some horrific World War II events. It’s going to be a challenge going from those sights one day, to group karaoke the next day, then to live classical music in Gabe’s apartment, then back to the death camps. Wow, Europe Semester is incredible.