At the beginning of this year my boyfriend, James, and I went on a 20 day trip with a single backpack each. We visited 4 countries, 10 cities, carrying 4 cameras and probably an equal amount of shirts.

Our first stop was Berlin. We arrived to Berlin-Schönefeld in the afternoon and headed to the city to meet our host, my cousin Mariella. On our first night in Berlin we visited one of the famous Christmas markets at Rotes Rathaus. The market took us back to the holiday times, with countless wooden stands selling everything from ornaments and vintage posters to colourful candy. We grabbed three cups of glühwein, one of the most iconic beverages of the Christmas markets, and had a chat by the fire. Mariella had more in store for us, so we went to Bei Schlawinchen, a bar no bigger than a small apartment. This bar is famous for never closing in the last 30 years. It really was like a small time capsule, completely remote from the rest of the world, walls covered in trinkets from all over the globe.

We started our second day with a free walking tour. The tour began at Museum Island, which is a museum complex in the middle of Berlin, collecting the most famous museums of the city. We chose a standard tour, which took us around the city to the most important sights. Such places as the Neue Wache, the Ballet, Bebel Platcz, and the Holocaust Memorial. One of the most mind blowing moment of our tour was when we stopped at this random parking lot in the middle of the city. Turns out we were standing on top of Hitler’s bunker, where he killed himself when the Germans lost the war. The tour was about 4 hours, finishing at the Brandenburg Gate. We walked around a bit in the city centre of Berlin then headed to the Jewish Museum.

The Jewish Museum blew us away. The architecture of the whole building is fascinating. We wandered up and down on slanted floors from one room to the next. The museum has these so called ‘Voids’. These are installations which tell of the tragedy of the Jews during the Holocaust. One of these is the Void of Silence. It’s a pitch black room bathed in total silence. We spent several minutes standing in the darkness, listening to our own breathing. As James said “this is how it must feel to be dead”. The experience was chilling. The second void we could visit was the Void of Memory, and installation by Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman. It’s a tall concrete shaft, where the floor is covered in 10,000 metal faces. Remembering the victims of war every step in the room creates dozens of scraping screams.

Our third morning in Berlin took us to the East Side Gallery. It is part of the Berlin Wall which was turned into a mural gallery in 1990, created by artists coming from all corners of the world. We spent hours walking along the wall looking at beautiful paintings and meaningful messages. Where this section of the wall ended we walked around the corner and looked down the other side remembering how many people could not make this one little step for so long. From here we headed to the Holocaust Memorial. Walking between the tall metal pillars there was a weird sense of loneliness even though there were dozens of other people walking around the monument. This moment of solitude made me think of all the lives touched by this atrocity, lives of millions including my own family. From there we went to Brandenburg Gate again to take some pictures. January might be very cold but it is ideal for taking photos with a lot less tourists around. We visited Checkpoint Charlie, which was one of checkpoints between East and West Berlin. In one of the nearby souvenir shops we found one of strangest memorabilia I have seen so far. You could purchase small rocks in glass casing, which were allegedly part of the Berlin wall. You could also buy these pieces of bricks by the kilo.

Next day we ventured out from the centre of Berlin to Charlottenburg Palace. It’s a beautiful Baroque style building with a huge, magical garden around the back. It was built as a summer house for Sophie Charlotte of Hanover by her husband. We spent hours walking around inside the palace’s museum which takes you back to the time of Prussian kings and queens. From one museum we headed to the next, the Pergamon Museum on Museum Island. Only half of the museum was open for visitors but that was already a lot to see. The Pergamon Museum is a huge building which consists of three main exhibitions; Collection of Classical Antiquities, Museum of Ancient Near East and Museum of Islamic Art. The huge halls of the museum give space for life size reproductions of ancient wonders, like the Market Gate of Miletus or the Ishtar Gate. Walking under the giant monuments gives you the feeling that you have travelled back in time. I can’t recommend the museum enough. It showed me a new way of exhibiting artefacts, which I later found out was quite similar to British Museum.

We had one last half a day before departing to our next destination. We used this time to visit the Berlin Wall Memorial and the Berlin Wall Documentation Center remembering the life lost to the wall and what it represented. The center tells the detailed history of the wall, starting from its inception to its eventual fall at the end of the Cold War. The center also has a small tower from which we could have a view of a small part of the wall area preserved as it was in its prime. You can see the barbwires and guard towers and all other obstacles that stood in front of the East Berliners.

James and me, we had a marvellous time in Berlin. We spent 4 and a half day in the city and we still feel like we have not seen enough. Berlin is filled with life to the brim, and in every corner you can find a party and some fun. We will definitely come back again, preferably in a warmer time to see even more of Berlin and it’s fizzing life.