Berlin day 1

No pictures till I get back sorry. ´
I got into Berlin last night, and found the hostel easily. it wasn't that late but the people in my room were already sleeping. instead of staying up and packing the night before, they decided to get up and pack at 5 am and then leave. thanks for getting me up. Fell back asleep, and I had set my alarm the night before for 8:40, then I changed the time an hour ahead. apparently my phone decided to go off at 9:40 am . oh well.

anyway. a few things I noticed last night on my first U-bahn ride... guys were pulling out beers out of their pockets and just drinkin on the train
-the underground trains in london have open buttons on the doors, but the doors open automatically anyway. Here you get to actually press the button, and the doors don't open otherwise when you get to a stop
-Unlike in DC and London where the driver of the train makes a lot of announcements and there are automated announcements constantly, there's hardly any on the trains here.  It's nice and quiet .
-There's hardly any staff at the u-bahn stations besides the people working in news stalls. There are no information or ticket booths , and there are no gates to go through. It works on an honor system. not sure how many people use it. there are only two ticket machines at an entrance, and never any lines. it does make riding the tube less stressfull-sometimes waiting on ticket lines is annoying and dealing with metro cards that don't work. Even though its less stressful, I can't imagine how the train service stays in business. I guess they don't have to employ as many people in the first place. ´
-you can tell Berlin went through a lot. the stations are a bit outdated and in some cases covered in grafiti. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that you can get in without tickets and there's no staff watching you.

Anyway...to my day. First I went to see the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. All right next to each other. it was a beautiful day and the sites were pretty cool. I enjozed the Memorial very much. you will see photos and a video in the future.

After that I made my way down Unter den Linden which is the main street coming from the gate. Unter den Linden means Under the Linden and Linden are the type of trees that line the streets. Well, Fall has hit Berlin because most of the trees had shed their leaves, but the ones that did have some left were very pretty -bright yellow leaves.
I walked down to the German History museum- was glad they had the information in english. It was interesting. it had a lot of information and was well laid out.

After the museum I started to continue down the street and came upon a street market. walked down that...it had lots of books. very cool but of course I can't read them.
After the street market I came upon the Berlin Dome- a church, and then Alexanderplatz-which wasnt too exciting but i did a little shopping-not really impressed with their clothes shopping. i have to research where else to go .
And then after Alexanderplatz, i stopped at checkpoint charlie, but the museum was crowded so I'm going to do it tomorrow, so I went to the Jewish Museum. Also very interesting to find out the whole history of Jewish people in germany, not just the Holocaust.

That was the end of my day. and now i'm back at the lovely hostel , having dinner and relaxing before i do a million more things tomorrow.

cheers!