The Importance of Ice Cream and German History

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Last night we decided that we could afford to sleep in today since we had a noon check out and only a few sites planned for the day. We got up around 10 and checked out of the hostel just before noon. We were pretty hungry so we headed to the Cafe at the Opera House which is famous for its desserts. The menu was a little out of our price range so we decided just to get dessert and we could buy a pretzel from a street vendor later.

We ate some amazing ice cream, we had raspberry and lavender poppyseed with fresh raspberries, sauce and whipped cream. It was incredible. We did stop and get a prrtzel before going to the German History museum.

First of all, the German history museum is huge. Second, German history is pretty much Western European history since Germany didn't become a country until the mid-1800s.  I focused on the areas covering the Protestant reformation, the life of Karl Marx and the conditions leading up to WWII. It was so interesting, a little tough to follow at times but well worth the time.

After spending 3 hours at the German hostoey museum we walked across the street to the Guggenheim. Jamie has a goal to visit all of the Guggenheims. The German Guggenheim is much smaller than the one in New York and is not as intereting looking. The exhibit was okay but we only spent about 45 minutes there.

After the Guggenheim we headed back towards the hostel. We stopped at a traditional German restaurant and ate some really good, filling and inexpensive schnitzel.

From there we headed back to the hostel to get our packs and then to the main train station where I bought an Appel Manchen, these are the East Berlin stop and walk signs at street lights, they are really cute. I got the green walk guy on a magnet.

We finally boarded the train at 9:15 and settled down to sleep.  It's our last overnight train and I'm pretty thankful for that!

Suzie :-)