Sav: Today we had an amazing first full day in Berlin! After crèpes, we started off by doing a ‘Rick Steves’ audio walking tour. So sidebar for one second: Rick Steves is very informative but absolutely just the nerdiest middle aged guy ever. He wears sweaters tied around his neck and tries to talk in local languages and says things like “turn left, my friend.” Except in German. So Meaghan and I spent the early part of this tour at the Brandenburg Gate laughing at Rick and gazing at the gate. Which was significantly larger than I thought it would be, by the way.

Meag: We also checked out the Reichstag building, Pariser Platz, the Jewish Memorial and Wilhelmstrasse with the help of our good friend Rick Steves. It was a great overview of the stops we visited, but with everything he said I had more questions! There is so much to learn about here.

S: The Jewish memorial was difficult to walk through. It was a city block completely filled with 2000 odd vaguely coffin shaped concrete slabs. An arbitrary number but incredibly sobering to walk through this maze that doesn’t seem to end.

M: We grabbed some fresh chips on a stick by the Brandenburg Gate, which we devoured as we watched a very eccentric band perform what sounded like some kind of Eastern European folk songs. About every 10 seconds, Savanna commented on the deliciousness of the chips. She was right, they were delicious.

S: But SO delicious. I want to eat chips that way forever. Thanks for ruining bagged chips for me, Germany! I’m legitimately frowning. After chip worshiping, we met up with Matt and his friend Tobi to head to a live soccer game to cheer on Berlin! We arrived to the 1936 Olympic stadium among a massive crowd to cheers and booms and an incredible atmosphere. A couple of beers and hot-dogs later we made our way to our seats. Turns out there were over 55,000 people there! Meaghan and I had a small laugh about the fact that the entire Yukon Territory could have fit in that stadium twice over…

The home team cheered the entire time to coordinated songs and clapping and jumping- I’m not sure I would have the stamina to do that every week! After some awesome battling and a lot of fake injuries, Berlin won 2-0 to the incredible sound of tens of thousands of people screaming.

M: I loved the whole thing! There was so much going on – from the security lady who gave us a very intense pat-down, to the fans yelling and giving the ref the finger, to the players dramatically flailing every time they went down. Tobi occasionally translated the cheers for me, sometimes simply as “they’re saying something not very nice.”

We met Carla and Farzin (Matt’s friends from Chemnitz) back at the hostel and went out in search of food. Savanna’s inability to choose somewhere to eat combined with our hunger meant Savanna was purposefully not allowed to take part in the food decision-making process. After an enchilada and mojito, I was an even happier camper.

S: I think I’m going to be excluded from most food related decisions in the future… It’s probably better that way. The night ended with my favourite thing – gelato – then we retired to our Hostel.

S&M