In December, we traveled by train to Frankfurt and Cologne to visit the Christmas markets. And most recently, a couple weeks ago we took a DB (Deutsche Bahn) train to Leipzig and Dresden. Each city is no more than 2 hours from Berlin. One of the things that we love about being so centrally located in Europe is how accessible, easy, fast, and inexpensive train travel can be.
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| Berlin Central Station |
Compared to Berlin (and other major European countries), there wasn't a whole lot to do in either city, other than, well....enjoy the city, the architecture, street art, and market squares. We went into one museum, but other than that we had afternoon tea/coffee, had lunch in small cafes, and tried some local Gose (I'll get into that later).
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{ T H I N G S W E A T E / D R A N K }
Bayerischer Bahnhof
Gose is a drink that has been popular in Saxony for centuries. It's a German beer (duh) fermented with coriander and from a non-beer connoisseur, the closest beer that I can compare this to is a sour beer. It's dry, yet completely refreshing and light. Ich kann es euch nur empfehlen (I can only recommend it to you).
Café Gloria
Going out to tea is an activity that we have recently adopted both when traveling, as well as here in Berlin. At this cafe, we had a view of this church (pictured on the right) at our seat.
Handbrotzeit
If you're looking for a bread roll, you'll enjoy this. If you want a sandwich, you will not. We thought we were going to get a sandwich with good bread. To put it straight, we were disappointed. The reviewers for this cafe raved at how good these were. These are big (very fresh) rolls, that tasted like cinnamon roll dough, with a little bit of cheese/mushrooms and cheese/ham. Ok, now that I type it out, it sounds good, but there was not much flavor. 2 stars** from us only because the salad (pictured in-between our plates) was excellent.
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Stasi Museum
This museum is where the Stasi headquarters for the district of Leipzig was held. Every thing was in german (and not vocabulary that I'm rehearsed in) so I was only able to translate about 50% of it for Case. The items they had on display were pretty interesting. There were contraptions on display that were developed to open peoples mail and close them and made it look like it was never intercepted, listening and surveillance devices, and all things counterfeit (badges, passports, mail postage). What a world to have lived in, although it's pretty interesting in many facets at the moment...
DRESDEN
On our way back to Berlin from Leipzig, we stopped in Dresden. We stored our bags in a locker at the train station and spent the day walking through the historical part of town. An overnight stop could have also been fine, but an afternoon was definitely enough to see the highlights without feeling totally rushed.
I think this might have been our last trip for a while as we try and ride out this pandemic. We had a few trips planned this month (March) and April for Easter, but they have obviously been cancelled and put on hold. We are so grateful, not only for the opportunities that we have to travel around Europe, but more importantly, that Case and I have each other, and that we are safe and healthy here in Berlin. Being away from family is hands down the hardest part about living abroad, especially in a time of so many unknowns and uncertainty of what the near future holds. It's unnerving for us all, but with a plethora of the ways that technology is able to connect us with our family and friends (#socialdistancing), we are grateful to have that option readily available at our (clean) finger tips (#washyourhands).
