Copenhagen and Berlin

Hello everyone,

Here some notes about my travel upto now.
So, the first destination was Copenhagen. Took one day of 'training' to go there, but during this journey I was rewarded with a nice 45 minutes on a ferry in between Germany and Denmark. Was surprised about the train going into the ferry, but it was a very nice way to enter Denmark. The hostel I stayed was in the middle of downtown, so a very good place to start from every morning. The first day I joined a free guided tour through the city and that was really nice to get to know all the nice spots and the city's history. Basically whole Copenhagen burned down, because all the houses were made out of wood and very tighly build. So once there was a fire, it was very difficult to stop it quickly. That makes Copenhagen a quite young city according to architecture. It's a very colourful town and that makes it very cozy. After that I walked to the little meermaid and took a picture with her as so many other people do. Besides, I biked to Christiania, a 'free' part of the city where the hippyculture and softdrug use
are very big, they even don't pay any taxes at all, so a very interesting place to visit. Afterwards we climbed a tower to see the view over Copenhagen from up there. The weather was amazing, so bright, great view. Then we had a coffee at the other side of the city, that we drank while we sat down in the grass of a cemetery. In summer, people play even football and frisbee there for example!
By then, it was time to move on to the next city; Berlin! I took the nighttrain to get there and that's a whole experience by itself. A couchette is very small for six people and their luggage, but it all worked out fine. I even slept quite well. We arrived around 7.00 at Berlin hauptbahnhof and the receptionist of my hostel was so kind that she allowed me to enter my room way earlier than the check in time, so I could still sleep a bit more :-) . So after that needed nap I met Jacob, a friend that I met during the Intensive Program in Spain that took place in the end of February. We went to the technical museum and that was great fun. Didn't even see everything, therefore it was way too big. In the evening I took pictures of some Berliner highlights. Because of the festival of lights that took place, some of these were nicely covered in colours and music was played by street musicians. The next day, I joined two guided tours trough Berlin. One was about Berlin's history and the other was an 'alternative tour' that showed us Berlin's street art. Not only graffiti is big in the city, but also other forms of street art like stickers, tiles, posters and massive pieces of paper that artists stick to walls. This tour made me more conscious about the art that's out there, in Berlin you have to keep your eyes wide open to see all the beauty it captures.
I found it also very interesting to learn about the purpose of the street art and how gentrification and tourism influence Berlin as a city.
Two days in Berlin is certainly too short, but I enjoyed my time there very well.

While I write this I'm sitting in a couchette to Budapest, on to the next experience. Hope you enjoyed reading my story and take a look at the pictures ^^

Liefs, Danouck.