To be honest, Berlin wasn’t on the top of my list of places I wanted to go to. But, I’d never been to Germany and I thought it was high time. I am SO glad I did; and when it was time to go I never wanted to! The city is FULL of history, so new and fresh it’s chilling. It’s an international city jam packed with upcoming artists of all kinds and dotted with third wave coffee shops and amazing food. So if you’re here just for the weekend as I was, here are the most important things to hit.
1. The Berlin Wall Memorial 
This site is often over looked by tourists who go to see the East Side Gallery which is the painted wall along the Spree River. You can stand on both the East Side of the Wall as well as the West Side and see the gap that separated families and friends for the guts of 30 years; the gap that took lives and freedoms from half the people of Berlin. It has a beautiful gallery memorial museum as well that will give you a bit of a history of the wall. (More of which you can see at Checkpoint Charlie)
2. East Side Gallery 
This is the more famous still standing area of the Berlin Wall. It’s painted periodically but still the picture of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker still stands. And is hard to get a photo of to be honest!
3. Checkpoint Charlie
This is the area when crossing into West Berlin to East Berlin and back. Charlie stands for the letter as in Alpha, Beta, Charlie. There’s a massive museum that is a little overwhelming. And I gave it an hour and a half! So make sure you have a lot of time while viewing it. It’s seriously worth it though, it teaches you most everything you need to know about the turmoils of what came from the Berlin Wall and stories of people who died and survived crossing the boarder and living a completely different life than their family and friends are living in the same city under different rules.
4. Holocaust Memorial
Concrete slates of different sizes and heights cover a significant corner of Tiergarten park (A park just as big as Central Park!). I would highly suggest reading about it before coming to the memorial as there is nothing to state the significance of the memorial there which disappointed me.
5. DDR Museum
So this was kind of a cool museum that shows you about the life of East Berliners during the time the wall stood. It’s really interactive and you can basically touch everything so that’s a fun change up from most museums you’ll ever go to!
6. The Jewish Museum 
This museum has some really moving pieces as well as the main exhibit. As a Jewish girl I knew a bunch of stuff in the exhibit but it said some amazing things that I learned about German Jews. It was really informative and definitely worth a visit especially for the Holocaust Tower.
7.
Where to Sleep
So between sight seeing, you obviously need to sleep. Here’s where I stayed for 11 USD per night: Baxpax Mitte Hostel it was a decent hostel, the only downside was that they had lockers but I honestly had no idea where the key was haha and there was only one extension cord for chargers by the door and I’m always on my phone plus I set my alarm every morning early and wanted to make sure I heard it!!
Where to Eat
So the whole time I was soo ready for the amazing Third Wave Coffee shops in Berlin so that’s prettyyy much where I ate and drank all weekend. I will shortly post a guide to those coffee shops so stay tuned! But as an overview, we at at St. Oberholz, Silo, Kaffeebar, Roamers, and Father Carpenters which are dotted all over the city so it’ll be really easy to get to any of these places!
Where to Drink
If you’re feeling up to it, there’s a world famous club called Berghain. I’m pretty sure it even has a documentary. Just be aware that people in Berlin go out late and stay out all night. There’s a famous bouncer as well with a tattoo on his face and you’ll be lucky if he lets you in after potential hours on line! But if you can do it, you’ll be in for an amazing night. Note: for girls, they don’t go out in heels! Rock up with cool and grungy outfits and you’ll be good!
Have an amazing time because Berlin is an AMAZING city. Definitely one of my favorites so far!!
For the Confused Traveler 