What a cute bear!....Berlin!

I'm at my internship writing this...but seeing as how the boss isn't here yet that's okay. This past weekend, five of the girls (Victoria, Becca, Autumn, Adrienne and Erin) and I made our way east towards the city of Berlin.
Being on a student budget, we booked our trip on Eurolines (a bus) so it took a fun 11 hours to arrive on an overnight bus. Most unfortunately, Becca and I weren;t able to sit together for a great part of the trip but seeing as how we were sleeping it really didn't matter to much, until we got to the rest stop and speaking over the lady sitting next to me I implied that we were seat sharing (if this has ever happened to anyone with a total stranger you know how awkward it can be). Most unfortunately this lady spoke not only French, which was what I had been using to speak with her but crystal clear English. Oh man!!!!!! Anyway she got off at Hanover and Becca and I were able to share a seat next to each other until we arrived in Berlin.
When we arrived, we were looking quite fabulous, coming from an overnight trip with little/uncomfortable sleep, and proceeded to find the S-bahn metro station, which according to Autumn and Victoria's directions should have been very near. We finally found it, brought tickets and away we went!!!! We found our hostel no problem and left our luggage there until official check in time and went in search of food. So what to you eat in a German city...Italian of course!!!! We ate some very delicious pasta by a restaurant near the hostel and made a game plan (because I'm a huge fan of them).
Next, we made it to Bradenburger Tor which was the only monument on Parisier Platz to survive bombing during WWII and took fun pics. Becca made friends with some guys who were posing with flags for money and we then walked over to Reichstag or parliament and waited in line (or as the Brits say queue) to get to the top of the glass structure. It was sooooooooooo beautiful!!!!! A must do for anyone going to Berlin. It provides a great view of the entire city and (as we later learned on our free tour) looks down into Parliament so that they may always remember it is the German people in charge not them...they work for the German population.
After the Reichstag (which included some embarrassing attempts on my part to do a jumping picture) we decided to be lazy and get ice cream and chill on the glass in front of the Reichstag....basically a good idea. It was a lovely day in Berlin and the sun felt very nice (especially after chilly Brussels). After we lazed about of a bit we saw another monument and then headed to the hostel for happy hour and to meet fellow travelers. We ended up chatting with 3 Brits, 1 New Zealander and 1 American that evening and it was great fun.... all on day one!
On Saturday we left for a free tour of the city and our tour guide was awesome (fun fact: these free tours are available in London, Amsterdam, Madrid, Paris). She told us that people think the name Berlin comes from cute little bear- Ber=bear and lin=cute/little but REALLY it means swamp land. So really Berlin is a city built on top of a swamp!!!!! We saw Hitler's bunker, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, old Nazi buildings, several monuments and museums and the Jewish Memorial which was truly spectacular. This gave us great ideas of places we wanted to return to on Sunday and see more in depth. After the three and a half hour tour, we headed back to the hostel for dinner and then to scope out some fun places to hang out. Before that though, Becca ran into the MAN WITH THE GREEN PANTS and we found out that he was a perfect francophone (so our sneaky device or speaking French about him was not clever AT ALL) and he would not give her his awesome green pants. We were disappointed because we thought Becca's persuasive skills would have won out at the end of the day. After the GREEN PANTS mission, we headed out and that was a bit of a failure. We made it to Prenzlauer Berg where several people had told us there were several fun places to dance but either a) we are blind and didn't see them b) Saturday is not a dancing night in Berlin or c) we were misinformed. We did however find kauf dich glücklich which was a very delicious waffle place and I recommend you go there. With luck not on our side we headed back to the hostel for sleep.
On Sunday we headed back to the Jewish Memorial and Checkpoint Charlie for pictures and to see the exhibits. We saw part of the Berlin marathon which was madness...people everywhere although major props to the Danes for representing.... I saw Danish flags everywhere it was impressive. We tired going to the East Side Gallery but the metro that would take us there was closed :( so we returned to the hostel's neighborhood for a snack a.k.a. ice cream and then to grab our stuff and head down to the bus station. At the station we bought dinner and boarded. On the bus, we "read" and after that was over and done with we head the Berlin Convention and drafted the Treaty of Berlin. (See we are using our new knowledge while on vacation...majority impressive). We made it to Brussels 30 minutes ahead of schedule so of course a creeper decided to have a not so friendly chat with us but all in all Berlin was AMAZING, if you get the chance you should definitely go!!!!!