{Travel Diaries} Bear- Lin

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View of the River from Museum Island

CIEE does a good job of keeping things interesting for their students. It was Week 3 of the program, and they tell us to pack our bags for our ICE weekend. What that stands for is Intercultural Emersion weekend, or something to that extent. Basically for us it means that the program is taking us to another country for the weekend! So we all hopped onto a bus - for about six hours - and drove from Prague, Czech Republic to Berlin, Germany for the weekend!

When we first arrived in Berlin, we unpacked and stayed at a hostel - which is understandable considering there were a little more than 100 students. But as soon as we arrived, the CIEE Berlin staff whisked us through orientation and then they handed us off to some tour guides and we began our walking tours of the city!

The tour took us throughout the whole city! We walked past popular attractions like the Bradenburg Gate, the Jewish Memorial, and the Victim of War Memorial. We also got to experience the crazy train system they have in Berlin. That night though, we decided to play it chill, so we went to a bar nearby and had a couple drinks and met some other people who were also visiting Berlin that weekend too. The two most interesting things I'll remember about that night is I got carded at the bar for the first time (which would be cool except the drinking age is 16 and I was 20...) and seeing real life prostitutes! In Berlin, prostitution is legal, so we found it curious to just watch these women patrol the streets and see how people went about socializing with them.

Graffiti House - in East AND West Berlin

The next day we went on more cultural walking tours, and I opted to visit the alternative spaces tour, which basically showed us neat buildings and small community gardens and such. That night we celebrated my birthday... by going to the free opera. Which in my opinion was cool, for about 30 minutes. It was difficult because we ended up staying and watching the whole opera, which was 4 hours and in German. Rough. Most people had bowed out by then, but my friends and I didn't want to be rude. Oh well.

The following day we had some free time to wander around the city, so my friends and I visited the Flohnmarket (spelling?) which was the biggest flea market that is located where the former death strip was. After browsing for ages, we eventually headed back to the Brandenburg Gate for one last glimpse, and then we were shuttled back to the hostel and we headed back to Prague.

The Brandenburg Gate

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Ayim Mori

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