Busy in Berlin

Once again, I spent the weekend outside of my actual town. This time, I took a quick hour-and-a-half train ride and explored Berlin. Along with another intrepid student, I headed into the city for three days of adventure.

We spent the weekend as accidental tourists. “Accidental” in that our only plans were…

1. Go to a flea market
2. Shop at a vegan grocery store (the vegan options in Cottbus are sadly lacking, and although I’m not vegan, the groceries options seemed interesting enough for a visit)

Despite that rather…ahem…medium at best amount of planning, we actually ended up seeing many of the major sites in Berlin. The Berlin Cathedral, Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Plats…we wound up walking for most of our three days there, and kept finding new sites to check off the list.

Of course, we found some great old buildings.

We walked approximately everywhere.

And just like we planned, we also visited some flea markets. My original goal was to buy a bicycle, but that wasn’t in the cards for this trip. Instead, we poked around heaps of “treasures.”

Look who I found lurking in the flea markets…Pippi Langstrumpf, indeed.

Our last day in Berlin was Monday, October 3 — German Unity Day. It’s a national holiday celebrating the 1990 reunification of Germany. We went by Brandenburg Gate, hoping for some celebrations. It was mostly a family-friendly carnival vibe, complete with rides and masses of families with kiddos. Plus snacks for kids and any last stragglers celebrating Oktoberfest.

We headed back to Cottbus on Monday afternoon, and got prepared for the orientation activities that are happening this week. Classes officially start in a week, so this week is dedicated to informational events around campus, introducing us to how the school works — using our student account, registering for courses, learning about the programs, etc. Seems like helpful information that could have been useful about, say, three weeks ago…

Here’s a view of Cottbus, by the way. We hiked to the top of the tallest tower in town to get a good view of the alleys and old houses. The city is population 100,000, so there’s much more to it than just this — this is just the most picturesque shot so far.