Berlin

Where to begin? Let me first say that I absolutely love the city and everything about it. It is a place of extreme contrasts - the old and the new, the poor and the rich, colourful and gray. It is also exciting, dynamic, fast, ever-changing, dirty and artistic. We spent the first few days visiting contemporary art galleries which are hidden in every dilapidated alleyway and staircase in the city, as well as some incredible photography exhibitions. We also did a free walking tour which was so interesting considering berlin's recent and remarkable history. The Berlin wall only came down 20 years ago and the remnants of the city's old self are scattered all throughout the city. In fact, we loved the tour so much that when we returned to Berlin three days later we did another two with the same company. One was an alternative city tour which introduced us to the grungy, graffitied heart of the city in which we visited some of its most famous street art and squatting houses. The next day we did a tour out to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside of Berlin which was the benchmark for all other concentration camps under the nazi regime. It was an eye-opening experience and just made us appreciate everything we have do much more. Berlin is very cheap so we stayed in a 7 euro youth hostel when we weren't bumming off our generous friends and eating amazing turkish, Indian and Japanese food for ridiculously low prices.