Parks and Rivers aka Easter Break in Berlin

One of the crazy advantages of studying at Queen's is that we have 3 weeks of Easter break without any lectures or duties. 3 weeks of nothing in 12 weeks long semester seems kind of funny to me but for Erasmus students it is amazing opportunity to travel a lot. So we do. One of the most favourite locations to travel is Scotland - Glasgow, Edinbourgh, Loch Ness and Northern Highlands. Other destinations to go are London of course or some circuit around Ireland. Some people are also heading back home to see their family or girl/boyfriend and some people are just crazy and go to Germany, US, Portugal and then back to Belfast. So I chose to combine travel and visit my close ones. I went to Berlin to see my boyfriend for whole 3 weeks. After all, it is half of my stay in Belfast and it is appropriate time for such a visit.

When the plane was landing in Berlin, I was surprised and thought something is wrong, because I saw just woods and lots of rivers and ponds. But it turned out to be really Berlin and it stayed like this for whole 3 weeks. There is just so many parks and the river Spree and other smaller rivers are just everywhere and it gives the city very dynamic/relaxed feeling. Amazing thing about parks is that nearly everywhere you go, you can go around river or under trees or just through forest. To describe Berlin - it is many smaller, cute and sometimes even countryside looking towns plus busy modern city center. Each of the little towns has totally different atmosphere. But even in the city center there is a giant park right next to Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate. So even if you would like to hide from nature, you can't.

The parks are huge. It is not so hard to feel like in the middle of nowhere in few meters from street. That means there is also lots of different spots and fun places. There is a mini zoo, football stadium, concert stadium, little lake, train circuits, building model park and some other interesting things only in the park close to our flat. I could walk in this park for whole 3 weeks and I would still have things to explore. I even made there few new friends - 3 lamas, woodpeckers, singing blackbirds, fox!!! Do you understand it? Fox in the capital... I still can't believe it. Oh, and I was running there! I can't believe this too. You can? I can't.

The park starting 200 m from our appartement from sky

If you start to be bored with walking and running in parks, there are still the rivers and ponds and lakes. It is possible to borrow different kinds of boats probably nearly everywhere in Berlin. With an engine, without engine, with paddles or steppers. We took kayak for beautiful 2 hours on a sunny day. If you stay out of the way of the big industrial boats, you can sail pretty far. So we visited
Köpenick, which is just beautiful and cute, with cosy atmosphere... Until you find out that there took place so called Köpenick blood week, described as one of the earliest great atrocities of the Nazi period in 1933 with 500 arrested, interrogated and tortured people. The cosiness of the place is making the feeling even much more scary. It's like looking at a baby serial killer. Well... History is sometimes strange to understand from nowadays perspective. Especially if you don't know much about it as me :).

Me looking like a professional sailor

To cheer you up - there is the strangest abandoned place I've ever heard about in Spreepark next to the river. A big ferris wheel visible from a big distance is preparing you to meet an old abandoned entertainment park. I have to admit I firstly did not see the wheel, so I was suddenly surprised by a dead dinosaur lying behind a fence. And there was more of them all together with other fair attractions, everything covered with grass, dirt and obviously not used. We even found it in a list of the most beautiful abandoned places in Germany (if you want to see some pictures, see number 2 on the list http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/beautiful-berlin#.sf1ll3g0K)

Dead T-Rex under ferris wheel

In the same park I also met the greenest grass on planet Earth. All the place was smelling like an onion and it felt so strange. Have you ever smelled onions in a forest? My boyfriend said it is grass which is normally considered weed and they feed it to rabbits. Because I like onions, it was like claiming it is not poisonous and I gave it a try. Firstly I enjoyed the onion taste but after some time I started to feel something is not alright and rest of our walk I was spitting all around. I really don't understand what the rabbits like about this grass.

The greenest grass in woods ever. Isn't it just refreshing under the sleeping trees?

There is just lots of fun in Berlin and you even don't have to see the city itself. But if you would like to know a bit more about it, the next post should offer you some more information and my experience ;).

Motto of the day: Do not eat things which smell like onion, but are not onion.