Backpacking

Today we began our first day of backpacking! We left around 8 with the Kleinfelds and headed to the Marburg train station for our train that left at 9. We turned our train pass on and said our goodbyes. It was bittersweet as I was excited to start our adventure but sad to be leaving Marburg and the Kleinfelds. We got on the train and talked most of the time, because our excitement was so high and we hadn't seen each other in a long time. We changed trains in Hannover and got on our next train to Berlin with no trouble. The eurail app is literally the best thing in the world. We found out really quickly how strenuous lugging around our backpacks really were. We finally made it to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof and got a snack at McDonalds as we figured out our directions to the hostel (because WiFi is impossible to find). We made it to our Hostel: Jugend Gästehaus which is a huge hostel right off of the main road from the train station (we tried to plan all our hostels next to the train stations so we would have less walking to do and could make it to the train stations quickly if needed). Hostel atmosphere is awesome because of the variety of people and the usual attitude of the people that work at the hostels. The guy that checked us in was extremely nice and was impressed with my German speaking. Because of my familiarity with Berlin, after we got settled in at the hostel, we first came across the Reichstag and then went in line from there to the Brandenburg Gate. There was a French festival being held at the plaza around the Brandenburg Gate with cool music, good food, and a ton of people. We hung out there for a bit and then continued on to the Jewish Memorial. We looked into renting bikes for the next day, but decided not to do that because of the cold and laziness and got bus passes instead. We also made it to Potzdamer Platz and hung out there as we ate gelato. After a long day, we headed back to the hostel, exhausted, showered, and headed to bed!