Berlin at Christmas (Day 3 and 4 and 5)

Dec 24, 2012

On Christmas eve, we started our day out in Kreuzberg, a neighborhood Tristan liked to hang out in when he lived here before. He took me to a kebab place he used to go to there, and I had burek (which sadley wasn't as great as it was in Macedonia). Then he showed me the infamous "bar without a name" that he often went to with his friends. Yes, it doesn't have a name. Hipster, right? 

Then we went to go see the Gedaechtniskirche. Unfortunately, it's still being restored and is completely covered (even though they were supposed to finish in June or something). 

This is what it looks like, supposedly. Though I've never seen it despite being to Berlin 3 times.

However, there was a mall nearby, so we got to see this...

Some sort of fairy world...

Also, a really fancy clock. 

Then we hung out in the toy department of a department store for a while before it closed at 1:30 and we got herded out. Starting about then, everything was closed.

Did I mention that, despite being more like a hotel where you randomly shared rooms than a hostel, the hostel had bunnies in the courtyard? 

So we headed towards Prenzlaur berg where we saw a monument that showed how the wall and the gap between it's two pieces had been laid out. All the shops in the neighborhood (including the one we wanted to go to) were closed. So we went back to Alexanderplatz and got nachos at a bar we visited when Tristan lived in Berlin called The PUB. This bar is mostly cool because it has taps at each table, so you get to serve yourself, and you can also order food from the screen there. The rest of the night was spent relaxing, and we had dinner at KFC because nothing else was open. 

Dec 25, 2012 

On Christmas Day, we went to the Berlin Zoo, the former home of the late Knut. 

We started in the petting zoo:

They wolves, which was pretty awesome. When we arrived at their enclosure, they were all howling!

 By the time we had finished at the zoo, it was raining and Tristan was starting to feel under the weather, himself. So we picked up some cold medicine at the pharmacy and headed back to rest.

Because of illness, we decided to forgo our dinner reservations at Hofbrau House. Instead, we picked up Bratwurst at the Christmas market before heading to our Christmas Concert. Unfortunately, we hadn't known what the concert was going to be -- it was nothing like I imagined. A quartet of trumpets is neither of our favorite types of music (especially because they didn't play anything the slightest bit recognizable!) However, we only paid 10 euro each for the concert, and it cost 5 euro to see the inside of the Berliner Dom anyway, so it wasn't terrible.

The Berliner Dom as captured in 2010 because that is apparently the only time I've ever taken a picture of it.

The inside...

And us...

December 26, 2012 (i.e. Second Christmas)

The next morning, we moved to a different hotel which was called the DDR Hotel and was themed to look like it was an apartment from the German Democratic Republic. 

It seems that Germans also celebrate the 26th as part of Christmas, so quite a few things were still closed. On this day, we visited the Teltow airfield (where the Berlin airlift took place), which today is a large park. It was quite windy, so we didn't stay to long.

We took it easy that day so that we could go out at night to the bar without a name for a drink even though Tristan was still sick. So we didn't do much else that day (at least, I don't remember what else we did, and I don't have any other pictures). And that was the end of Berlin for 2012, anyway.