Feel Berlin
So. I was in Berlin with my mother in the beginning of May, and now I finally got around to write about it!
Tuesday 3.5
I woke up at 4AM. Our plane didn't leave until 8.15 but we left for the airport around 5.30 to have spare time for possible traffic jams. We arrived at Berlin around 9.15 local time. I say Helsinki-Vantaa is a better airport than Tegel - we had to climb stairs with our luggage. (There was also a small elevator, but still!) We bought WelcomeCards - it grants access to all public transportation in Berlin (bus, train, tram, subway) for 5 days and discounts to various sights - and took a bus to our hotel. We got a room right away. It was quite nice, I liked how the beds were placed. Also, we noticed Hard Rock Cafe Berlin was just on the other side of the road! The road being Kurfürstendamm or, more shortly, Ku'damm, apparently THE shopping street of Berlin.
Ku'damm from our balcony. Spot Hard Rock Cafe!
We decided to visit the zoo first, the one in the vicinity of our hotel - as the name of the hotel indicates, Hotel Zoo Berlin. The zoo was HUGE! It apparently has more species than any other zoo in the world. It took 2-3 hours to go through it! Both me and Mom found it better than the zoo in Ueno, Tokyo. Animals had more space and yeah, there was more of them~ And... I SAW A GIANT PANDA! It wasn't actually that big, though... But really cute~<3
Panda~!
After spending some time at the hotel we went to see KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens), the biggest department store in whole Europe. And there was a floor information flyer in Finnish, too! We didn't use much time there since we just wanted to see it for now. But we noticed it was HUGE. (And had a manga shelf!) On the way there, we visited Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church). Its facade was being renovated so we almost missed it because it wasn't visible... But you could still go inside. Quite impressive, but I sure hope we could've seen the facade, too. It was seriously damaged in WW2 and looks like it!
Floor of the church.
We ate at Hard Rock Cafe that day. It was my first time in one - before that, I've only been to a Hard Rock Shop once. The waiters there are a bit different from "normal" - more relaxed. They might sit down with you when they talk to you. At first, I went "What the...", but Mom explained later that's normal at Hard Rock Cafe. I really liked the place~ A nice menu, the overall design is cool, and they have proper background music. >:3
Hard Rock Cafe Berlin.
We also visited a couple of the various souvenir shops in Berlin. Seriously, there were A LOT. Mom bought us postcards, including two with a piece of Berlin Wall inside - one for each! Then we saw a bear version of Brandenburger Tor's (Brandenburg Gate) statue and a cage with birds. You should've heard how loud they became when we got close... They were probably thinking we'd give them something to eat. In the evening, I planned a timetable for the coming days.
Wednesday 4.5
It's always interesting to see what kind of breakfast a hotel offers. I liked what I saw~ I think it was similar to Finland in a way, even if some things were different (e.g. no porridge). I was surprised to see waiters! They served coffee and cleaned up the tables. That was new for me, I've never been to a hotel like that.
After breakfast, we headed for Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum). That may sound like a weird place to visit, but it has the biggest dinosaur skeleton in the world - a Brachiosaurus standing 22 meters tall! I've never seen a dinosaur skeleton before so I was really excited~ The rest of the museum was also cool with its fossils and stuff.
Fit in the picture, you--!!
Next up was Berlin Wall. I used to think there's only a small part of it left nowadays. Well, there's only a small part with the watch tower and all, but the Wall still stands in various parts of Berlin (e.g. East Side Gallery). We actually walked along it for a while before realizing it's the Wall when we reached the watch tower part. :---D To think how many deaths it must've seen...
This is a part of the Wall next to the part with the watch tower.
We headed to the nearest S-Bahn station to get to Alexanderplatz. The station was really creepy since it was almost completely empty... Then, when I was looking at my map, a man asked us where we are heading and gave us instructions! Such a nice guy~
So we got to Alexanderplatz and looked around a bit. We were wondering where the Fernsehtum (TV Tower) is - it was supposed to be around here... Then suddenly, I noticed something - a reflection on the wall of a tall building. I turned around, and there it was, on the other side of the station! :---D We were gonna go up but gave up 'cause it would've taken at least an hour with all the people... Also, I was starting to feel sick. So we just sat at Starbucks for a while.
It shouldn't be exactly easy to miss such a tall tower...
We then headed for Sea Life and, more importantly, AquaDom. AquaDom is, to quote Wikipedia, a "25 meter tall cylindrical acrylic glass aquarium with built-in transparent elevator". It was kinda cool! I was expecting big sharks and stuff, though, but I forgot you can't just put them in such a small place with other fish... :---D
AquaDom.
I was starting to feel even more unwell at Sea Life and on our little tour around Marienkirche (a church), Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall), Nikolaiviertel (a reconstructed medieval part of Berlin) and Marx-Engels-Forum (a park with the statues of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels). Just as we reached the DDR Museum, I decided I'd rather get back to the hotel and come again the next day. And that we did. I was really sad because we had to skip the museum for that day. But we drove through Checkpoint Charlie on the way to the hotel! That cheered me up a bit. :3 (Yes, I'm a history freak.)
Marienkirche. Can I have a Trinity Blood photoshoot here plz?
Also, we found a grocery store that evening! Whoah!
Thursday 5.5
To avoid me feeling unwell again, we decided to buy tickets for a sightseeing bus. It was pretty convenient - you could hop on and hop off at the stops, and a bus came buy every 10-15 minutes. When buying the tickets, I got one for kids. Kids aged 6-14 years. For some reason, I wasn't completely amused, turning 20 this year... But I've ranted about this elsewhere so I'll spare you now.
Our first stop was gonna be Potsdamer Platz but we decided not to hop off after all since just seeing it seemed to be enough. Looked pretty modern! So our first stop was Checkpoint Charlie. I was so very excited to see that "You are leaving the American sector" sign, you have no idea! I just love stuff like that~ Too bad the guards didn't look as American as the one on the day before, haha. Near Checkpoint Charlie, there's a place now called Topographie des Terrors. It's an exhibition about Nazism and the political terror of the Nazis. What makes it really interesting is that it's the same place where the administration buildings of Gestapo and SS used to be. The buildings have been demolished - but some of the underground cells are a part of the exhibition. To think what has happened there...
Topographie des Terrors. If Mom was right, the building on the back was the headquarters of Luftwaffe.
After visiting the topography, we hopped on the bus again and headed for the DDR Museum. On the way there, we saw East Side Gallery - a long piece of the Wall full of paintings. Then we reached the museum - and didn't hop off because we were on the second floor of the bus and didn't realize it was the stop! You can guess whether I was amused or not... Anyway, we decided to head straight for Brandenburger Tor and take a taxi to get back those couple kilometers after seeing the sights over there.
Brandenburger Tor was just as grand as I expected~! But I forgot to go through it repeatedly and go "I'm in West Berlin! I'm in East Berlin!" ... Maybe it's better I forgot. :---D We also saw the Reichstag building which was HUGE. (Reichstag = valtiopäivät.) Everything seems to be huge in Germany... Then we went to see Holocaust Mahnmal, a memorial for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It was more impressive than you'd think just by looking at it from a picture. Walking among the concrete slabs... It's not something you do every day here.
Feeling small, ja?
Instead of taking a regular taxi back to the museum, we took a cycle rickshaw! It was kinda cool. :D Anyway, now we FINALLY got to the museum for real, and we could finally try out the Trabant there! It was small. How do I know? Because even me, a rather small person, can say it was small. In case you didn't know, you're allowed to sit inside of it~ And in case you didn't know, Trabants (also know as Trabis) were East German cars made out of hardboard. There's also a Trabi Safari in Berlin. There you get to drive a Trabi around Berlin for real! One tour lasts for an hour. We didn't go there, though, but we saw it!
How awesome would it be to drive a zebra Trabi?
The rest of the DDR Museum was pretty cool, too. It's rather interactive - you gotta open some boxes and stuff to see everything! There was also an interrogation room. Sure wouldn't like to be stuck in such a tiny room with an interrogator...
After visiting the museum, we headed for Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) which is located next to the museum. It's really beautiful, and really big! And if the exterior is gorgeous, the interior must be plain epic. It was just... whoah. I wish churches like that existed in Finland! Also, it was really cool to visit the crypt. So many coffins of deceased kings and queens... My favourite detail there was that some of the coffins had the crowns of their owners on them~
Can I have a coffin like that plz?
After visiting the cathedral we ate some crêpes and entered a shop called Ampelmann. Ampelmann refers to a cute traffic light used in East Germany, adn they still exist! My face when we saw the first ones~ Anyway, the shop. I bought some candy, a pencil, a card that shows the traffic light in action and an Ampelmann pin. They were made to support Japan.
Then we hopped on the sightseeing bus again, this time heading for Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Palace). It is a palace that used to belong to the Hohenzollern family, and it was the last sight for the day. On the way there, we saw Siegessäule, a victory column built after several successful wars Prussia waged in the late 19th century. Anyway, we got to the palace - and like pretty much everything else we saw in Berlin, it was big! And beautiful. We only bought tickets to see the old palace - we didn't feel like going through the new wing, too, because we were getting tired. I also purchased a license to photograph inside the castle. It's kinda weird for me to need a separate license for that since I've never seen a place like that in Finland. But in Saint Petersburg, most of the places were like that, so it didn't surprise me all that much...
So I herd you liek chinaware?
The castle had countless rooms, all more or less small. It even had a small but very pretty chapel~ An awesome place for a photoshoot, except that you can't really touch anything. :---D We also got audio guides but we didn't listen to everything it had to say. Nevertheless, it did tell interesting things about the paintings and stuff! After we had gone through the palace, we went to the palace shop. I bought a little magazine which tells about the palace, and a miniature crown! I already forgot whose crown it is, though... Maybe the original belonged to Friedrich III (later Friedrich I), the husband of Sophie Charlotte. She commissioned the palace. After shopping we walked around the palace to get to the garden. The park behind the palace is really big, so we just quickly strolled around the garden and left. It was symmetrical! (As a sidenote, I really wanna see Versailles one day. Mom has been there. So jealous!)
Garden of the palace.
We then hopped on the sightseeing bus once more to get back to the hotel. When we got there, we saw a red carpet on the road - Ku'damm was turning 125! Now I can say I've walked on a red carpet, haha. We did some shopping (e.g. at Hard Rock Cafe) and headed back to our room, only to see the first Indiana Jones movie dubbed in German. :---D We also heard some fireworks outside. They probably had something to do with Ku'damm?
Friday 6.5
Last full day! After breakfast, I took my time to actually decide where to go. We wanted to do some shopping but I had no idea where to go besides Ku'damm. Mom wouldn't have minded not leaving elsewhere at all, but I refused to spend the whole day in the vicinity of the hotel. So we first headed for Friedrichstraße. We had some problems with the subway - one of the lines wasn't working so we had to do some zigzagging. But we got there! We went to see a certain shopping mall. One with stores such as Prada. You can guess whether we bought anything... :D
Even the design says I'm not wealthy enough to shop here.
After that, we decided we could really visit Viktoriapark, and got there by subway. It was extremely beautiful! It's located on the highest hill of Berlin, so you could see quite far from the top. And on the top, there's an iron monument, a memorial of Napoleonic Wars. It was awesome~ And the park would be an awesome place for some photoshooting! (Me, thinking about cosplay? Never!)
Viktoriapark.
I can almost see a photoshoot...
Now even I thought we could get back to Ku'damm for the rest of the day. Also, I wanted to change my clothes. I was wearing my pretty coat I bought from Japan (as you can see in the picture above), but the day turned out to be so warm I didn't want to wear it all day. It wouldn't be a problem here in Finland, but it's not nice to feel uncomfortable while trying to enjoy a trip abroad. So after changing clothes, we headed for KaDeWe again, this time for some shopping! We also visited Idee, a part of KaDeWe dedicated to fabrics and crafting. And holy sh--, did it have a lot of stuff! There was a lot more fabrics than I expected, as much as a regular fabric store would have here! Also, craft foam was cheaper than in Finland, so I got a package of ten sheets of random colours. Didn't buy any fabrics, though, 'cause I need to take my time if I start shopping for them. :D Oh, and I also ate this gorgeous dessert of strawberries and whipped cream in KaDeWe~ *¬* Moar plz!
We then headed for Saturn, a big electronics store. It had... 5-6 floors? What I wanted there for was, of course, games! But first, I saw some anime and decided to get Tales of Vesperia: The First Strike. Then we went to the game section and I found Resonance of Fate! Hadn't seen it when we briefly visited the store on Tuesday. It has German subtitles and both Japanese and English voice acting. (Seriously, Sega is so awesome for actually giving a choice instead of just giving the English voices!) What's sad is that I'll probably understand the Japanese speech more than the German subtitles, and I've studied Japanese for three years and German for eight. :---D What's also sad is that I had to prove my age when buying them. Rated 16+. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THINKING OF ME AS A KID, GERMANS. Geez, nobody even cares about any else rating than 18+ here in Finland... which is not always necessarily a good thing, though.
We went back to the hotel to rest for a couple of hours, and then headed out again for moar shopping! I bought more souvenirs, e.g. another piece of the Wall with a cute little Trabi on it~! During the day, we also visited many stores now left unnamed. I don't really care about shoe stores and stuff, unlike Mom. In the evening, we headed for a Mövenpick restaurant! We ate some baked potatoes and, surprise!, ice cream~ Why can't we have a Mövenpick restaurant here?
Saturday 7.5
Last day, and I don't have much to say about it. We just strolled around in the vicinity of our hotel before grabbing our luggage and heading to the airport, where we strolled around for another couple hours before the flight left. And back in Finland we were...
Most of the stuff I bought~
Tuesday 3.5
I woke up at 4AM. Our plane didn't leave until 8.15 but we left for the airport around 5.30 to have spare time for possible traffic jams. We arrived at Berlin around 9.15 local time. I say Helsinki-Vantaa is a better airport than Tegel - we had to climb stairs with our luggage. (There was also a small elevator, but still!) We bought WelcomeCards - it grants access to all public transportation in Berlin (bus, train, tram, subway) for 5 days and discounts to various sights - and took a bus to our hotel. We got a room right away. It was quite nice, I liked how the beds were placed. Also, we noticed Hard Rock Cafe Berlin was just on the other side of the road! The road being Kurfürstendamm or, more shortly, Ku'damm, apparently THE shopping street of Berlin.
Ku'damm from our balcony. Spot Hard Rock Cafe!
We decided to visit the zoo first, the one in the vicinity of our hotel - as the name of the hotel indicates, Hotel Zoo Berlin. The zoo was HUGE! It apparently has more species than any other zoo in the world. It took 2-3 hours to go through it! Both me and Mom found it better than the zoo in Ueno, Tokyo. Animals had more space and yeah, there was more of them~ And... I SAW A GIANT PANDA! It wasn't actually that big, though... But really cute~<3
Panda~!
After spending some time at the hotel we went to see KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens), the biggest department store in whole Europe. And there was a floor information flyer in Finnish, too! We didn't use much time there since we just wanted to see it for now. But we noticed it was HUGE. (And had a manga shelf!) On the way there, we visited Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church). Its facade was being renovated so we almost missed it because it wasn't visible... But you could still go inside. Quite impressive, but I sure hope we could've seen the facade, too. It was seriously damaged in WW2 and looks like it!
Floor of the church.
We ate at Hard Rock Cafe that day. It was my first time in one - before that, I've only been to a Hard Rock Shop once. The waiters there are a bit different from "normal" - more relaxed. They might sit down with you when they talk to you. At first, I went "What the...", but Mom explained later that's normal at Hard Rock Cafe. I really liked the place~ A nice menu, the overall design is cool, and they have proper background music. >:3
Hard Rock Cafe Berlin.
We also visited a couple of the various souvenir shops in Berlin. Seriously, there were A LOT. Mom bought us postcards, including two with a piece of Berlin Wall inside - one for each! Then we saw a bear version of Brandenburger Tor's (Brandenburg Gate) statue and a cage with birds. You should've heard how loud they became when we got close... They were probably thinking we'd give them something to eat. In the evening, I planned a timetable for the coming days.
Wednesday 4.5
It's always interesting to see what kind of breakfast a hotel offers. I liked what I saw~ I think it was similar to Finland in a way, even if some things were different (e.g. no porridge). I was surprised to see waiters! They served coffee and cleaned up the tables. That was new for me, I've never been to a hotel like that.
After breakfast, we headed for Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum). That may sound like a weird place to visit, but it has the biggest dinosaur skeleton in the world - a Brachiosaurus standing 22 meters tall! I've never seen a dinosaur skeleton before so I was really excited~ The rest of the museum was also cool with its fossils and stuff.
Fit in the picture, you--!!
Next up was Berlin Wall. I used to think there's only a small part of it left nowadays. Well, there's only a small part with the watch tower and all, but the Wall still stands in various parts of Berlin (e.g. East Side Gallery). We actually walked along it for a while before realizing it's the Wall when we reached the watch tower part. :---D To think how many deaths it must've seen...
This is a part of the Wall next to the part with the watch tower.
We headed to the nearest S-Bahn station to get to Alexanderplatz. The station was really creepy since it was almost completely empty... Then, when I was looking at my map, a man asked us where we are heading and gave us instructions! Such a nice guy~
So we got to Alexanderplatz and looked around a bit. We were wondering where the Fernsehtum (TV Tower) is - it was supposed to be around here... Then suddenly, I noticed something - a reflection on the wall of a tall building. I turned around, and there it was, on the other side of the station! :---D We were gonna go up but gave up 'cause it would've taken at least an hour with all the people... Also, I was starting to feel sick. So we just sat at Starbucks for a while.
It shouldn't be exactly easy to miss such a tall tower...
We then headed for Sea Life and, more importantly, AquaDom. AquaDom is, to quote Wikipedia, a "25 meter tall cylindrical acrylic glass aquarium with built-in transparent elevator". It was kinda cool! I was expecting big sharks and stuff, though, but I forgot you can't just put them in such a small place with other fish... :---D
AquaDom.
I was starting to feel even more unwell at Sea Life and on our little tour around Marienkirche (a church), Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall), Nikolaiviertel (a reconstructed medieval part of Berlin) and Marx-Engels-Forum (a park with the statues of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels). Just as we reached the DDR Museum, I decided I'd rather get back to the hotel and come again the next day. And that we did. I was really sad because we had to skip the museum for that day. But we drove through Checkpoint Charlie on the way to the hotel! That cheered me up a bit. :3 (Yes, I'm a history freak.)
Marienkirche. Can I have a Trinity Blood photoshoot here plz?
Also, we found a grocery store that evening! Whoah!
Thursday 5.5
To avoid me feeling unwell again, we decided to buy tickets for a sightseeing bus. It was pretty convenient - you could hop on and hop off at the stops, and a bus came buy every 10-15 minutes. When buying the tickets, I got one for kids. Kids aged 6-14 years. For some reason, I wasn't completely amused, turning 20 this year... But I've ranted about this elsewhere so I'll spare you now.
Our first stop was gonna be Potsdamer Platz but we decided not to hop off after all since just seeing it seemed to be enough. Looked pretty modern! So our first stop was Checkpoint Charlie. I was so very excited to see that "You are leaving the American sector" sign, you have no idea! I just love stuff like that~ Too bad the guards didn't look as American as the one on the day before, haha. Near Checkpoint Charlie, there's a place now called Topographie des Terrors. It's an exhibition about Nazism and the political terror of the Nazis. What makes it really interesting is that it's the same place where the administration buildings of Gestapo and SS used to be. The buildings have been demolished - but some of the underground cells are a part of the exhibition. To think what has happened there...
Topographie des Terrors. If Mom was right, the building on the back was the headquarters of Luftwaffe.
After visiting the topography, we hopped on the bus again and headed for the DDR Museum. On the way there, we saw East Side Gallery - a long piece of the Wall full of paintings. Then we reached the museum - and didn't hop off because we were on the second floor of the bus and didn't realize it was the stop! You can guess whether I was amused or not... Anyway, we decided to head straight for Brandenburger Tor and take a taxi to get back those couple kilometers after seeing the sights over there.
Brandenburger Tor was just as grand as I expected~! But I forgot to go through it repeatedly and go "I'm in West Berlin! I'm in East Berlin!" ... Maybe it's better I forgot. :---D We also saw the Reichstag building which was HUGE. (Reichstag = valtiopäivät.) Everything seems to be huge in Germany... Then we went to see Holocaust Mahnmal, a memorial for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It was more impressive than you'd think just by looking at it from a picture. Walking among the concrete slabs... It's not something you do every day here.
Feeling small, ja?
Instead of taking a regular taxi back to the museum, we took a cycle rickshaw! It was kinda cool. :D Anyway, now we FINALLY got to the museum for real, and we could finally try out the Trabant there! It was small. How do I know? Because even me, a rather small person, can say it was small. In case you didn't know, you're allowed to sit inside of it~ And in case you didn't know, Trabants (also know as Trabis) were East German cars made out of hardboard. There's also a Trabi Safari in Berlin. There you get to drive a Trabi around Berlin for real! One tour lasts for an hour. We didn't go there, though, but we saw it!
How awesome would it be to drive a zebra Trabi?
The rest of the DDR Museum was pretty cool, too. It's rather interactive - you gotta open some boxes and stuff to see everything! There was also an interrogation room. Sure wouldn't like to be stuck in such a tiny room with an interrogator...
After visiting the museum, we headed for Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) which is located next to the museum. It's really beautiful, and really big! And if the exterior is gorgeous, the interior must be plain epic. It was just... whoah. I wish churches like that existed in Finland! Also, it was really cool to visit the crypt. So many coffins of deceased kings and queens... My favourite detail there was that some of the coffins had the crowns of their owners on them~
Can I have a coffin like that plz?
After visiting the cathedral we ate some crêpes and entered a shop called Ampelmann. Ampelmann refers to a cute traffic light used in East Germany, adn they still exist! My face when we saw the first ones~ Anyway, the shop. I bought some candy, a pencil, a card that shows the traffic light in action and an Ampelmann pin. They were made to support Japan.
Then we hopped on the sightseeing bus again, this time heading for Schloss Charlottenburg (Charlottenburg Palace). It is a palace that used to belong to the Hohenzollern family, and it was the last sight for the day. On the way there, we saw Siegessäule, a victory column built after several successful wars Prussia waged in the late 19th century. Anyway, we got to the palace - and like pretty much everything else we saw in Berlin, it was big! And beautiful. We only bought tickets to see the old palace - we didn't feel like going through the new wing, too, because we were getting tired. I also purchased a license to photograph inside the castle. It's kinda weird for me to need a separate license for that since I've never seen a place like that in Finland. But in Saint Petersburg, most of the places were like that, so it didn't surprise me all that much...
So I herd you liek chinaware?
The castle had countless rooms, all more or less small. It even had a small but very pretty chapel~ An awesome place for a photoshoot, except that you can't really touch anything. :---D We also got audio guides but we didn't listen to everything it had to say. Nevertheless, it did tell interesting things about the paintings and stuff! After we had gone through the palace, we went to the palace shop. I bought a little magazine which tells about the palace, and a miniature crown! I already forgot whose crown it is, though... Maybe the original belonged to Friedrich III (later Friedrich I), the husband of Sophie Charlotte. She commissioned the palace. After shopping we walked around the palace to get to the garden. The park behind the palace is really big, so we just quickly strolled around the garden and left. It was symmetrical! (As a sidenote, I really wanna see Versailles one day. Mom has been there. So jealous!)
Garden of the palace.
We then hopped on the sightseeing bus once more to get back to the hotel. When we got there, we saw a red carpet on the road - Ku'damm was turning 125! Now I can say I've walked on a red carpet, haha. We did some shopping (e.g. at Hard Rock Cafe) and headed back to our room, only to see the first Indiana Jones movie dubbed in German. :---D We also heard some fireworks outside. They probably had something to do with Ku'damm?
Friday 6.5
Last full day! After breakfast, I took my time to actually decide where to go. We wanted to do some shopping but I had no idea where to go besides Ku'damm. Mom wouldn't have minded not leaving elsewhere at all, but I refused to spend the whole day in the vicinity of the hotel. So we first headed for Friedrichstraße. We had some problems with the subway - one of the lines wasn't working so we had to do some zigzagging. But we got there! We went to see a certain shopping mall. One with stores such as Prada. You can guess whether we bought anything... :D
Even the design says I'm not wealthy enough to shop here.
After that, we decided we could really visit Viktoriapark, and got there by subway. It was extremely beautiful! It's located on the highest hill of Berlin, so you could see quite far from the top. And on the top, there's an iron monument, a memorial of Napoleonic Wars. It was awesome~ And the park would be an awesome place for some photoshooting! (Me, thinking about cosplay? Never!)
Viktoriapark.
I can almost see a photoshoot...
Now even I thought we could get back to Ku'damm for the rest of the day. Also, I wanted to change my clothes. I was wearing my pretty coat I bought from Japan (as you can see in the picture above), but the day turned out to be so warm I didn't want to wear it all day. It wouldn't be a problem here in Finland, but it's not nice to feel uncomfortable while trying to enjoy a trip abroad. So after changing clothes, we headed for KaDeWe again, this time for some shopping! We also visited Idee, a part of KaDeWe dedicated to fabrics and crafting. And holy sh--, did it have a lot of stuff! There was a lot more fabrics than I expected, as much as a regular fabric store would have here! Also, craft foam was cheaper than in Finland, so I got a package of ten sheets of random colours. Didn't buy any fabrics, though, 'cause I need to take my time if I start shopping for them. :D Oh, and I also ate this gorgeous dessert of strawberries and whipped cream in KaDeWe~ *¬* Moar plz!
We then headed for Saturn, a big electronics store. It had... 5-6 floors? What I wanted there for was, of course, games! But first, I saw some anime and decided to get Tales of Vesperia: The First Strike. Then we went to the game section and I found Resonance of Fate! Hadn't seen it when we briefly visited the store on Tuesday. It has German subtitles and both Japanese and English voice acting. (Seriously, Sega is so awesome for actually giving a choice instead of just giving the English voices!) What's sad is that I'll probably understand the Japanese speech more than the German subtitles, and I've studied Japanese for three years and German for eight. :---D What's also sad is that I had to prove my age when buying them. Rated 16+. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THINKING OF ME AS A KID, GERMANS. Geez, nobody even cares about any else rating than 18+ here in Finland... which is not always necessarily a good thing, though.
We went back to the hotel to rest for a couple of hours, and then headed out again for moar shopping! I bought more souvenirs, e.g. another piece of the Wall with a cute little Trabi on it~! During the day, we also visited many stores now left unnamed. I don't really care about shoe stores and stuff, unlike Mom. In the evening, we headed for a Mövenpick restaurant! We ate some baked potatoes and, surprise!, ice cream~ Why can't we have a Mövenpick restaurant here?
Saturday 7.5
Last day, and I don't have much to say about it. We just strolled around in the vicinity of our hotel before grabbing our luggage and heading to the airport, where we strolled around for another couple hours before the flight left. And back in Finland we were...
Most of the stuff I bought~