Itinerary for Berlin

To get you all amped to follow my trip in Berlin I want to share with you the trip's itinerary!

Saturday morning arrive in Berlin, check into our hostel.

Lunch at a traditional Beer Garden, walk around the neighborhood, and see remnants of the Wall.

Sunday

• Walking Tour around Berlin, lunch and visiting Checkpoint Charlie Museum

Monday

• Meet with experts on the European Union (EU) and US-EU relations
• Visit Humbolt University to talk about immigration issues
• Potential mixer with students from the university

Tuesday

• Visit to the Federal Foreign Office to talk about Transatlantic Relations and Germany's Role in the EU
• Walk up and around Kurfurstendamm Strasse
• Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
• Europa Center
• Tiergarten Park
• Lunch at Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe), second largest department store in Europe
• Free afternoon
• Evening at the Berlin Philharmonic 

Wednesday

• Private tour of the Bundesrat (upper house)
• Private tour of the Bundestag (lower house)

Thursday

• Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp tour
• Free afternoon

Friday

• Excursion to Dresden

Saturday

• Excursion to Potsdam

Sunday

• Entire day free (some of us have talked about going to Poland for the day)
• Farewell dinner in Berlin

Monday arrive back in North Carolina.

Today we had our last class meeting on campus before leaving.  We watched a German movie, Goodbye, Lenin.  The movie was set in East Berlin prior to the reunification.  The story line is about mother who is a strong Soviet advocate, she has a heart attack and falls into a coma.  While she is unconscious the Berlin Wall falls and reunification begins.  When the mother wakes up her children create the illusion that East Berlin is still under Communist control.  They spend months creating facades down to the jars of food and fake news shows, orchestrating plans to hide the truth from her for fear the shock would give her another heart attack.  The movie delves into the transitional issues the East and West Germans faced with reintegration as one country.  As citizens of the US we frequently assume that every one loves capitalism and wonder why any one would want any other way of life.  We assume that all Germans living in the East wanted to reunify with the West.  The movie illustrated that some Germans living under communism actually enjoyed the lifestyle and were advocates of Communism.  I caught myself off-guard at points when the characters were advocating Communism, which just goes to show I am enculturated into Western values, especially that of democracy.