Berlin Blog!

June 22:

Today we traveled from Belgium to Berlin. Once we got to Berlin, we walked around a bit and we went to visit a statue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who were the authors of the Communist Manifesto of 1848. 

We then found a nice park to sit in right next to the Altes museum which is very beautiful.

June 23:

Today, in the morning, Pierce, Bikem and I all walked down to see the east side gallery which is an open gallery of pieces of art that are painted on this long wall. The wall is 1,316 meters long in total and has a lot of art on it. 

Next we walked to a park that Bikem knew about. It was very hot that day and there was a huge market next to the park also. There was this mini arena that we found where a guy was street performing for the people who were watching. There were many musicians and people performing in random places in the park. We sat there for a while to hang out. 

June 24:

We went to a large park today and visited the Beethoven-Haydn-Mozart Memorial. It is a memorial to those classical composers and was commissioned by Kaiser Wilhelm II. 

We also went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe which are 2,711 columns that form a maze-like structure. 

We walked through the park some more and also we went to the Soviet War Memorial Tiergaten. It commemorates 7,000 of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who died during the Battle of Berlin in April-May of 1945. 

More pictures from the park:

June 25:

Today we decided to have a beach day, so Bikem and I researched to find the beach that we wanted to go to and we decided to go to a place called Krumme Lanke. It is located in the South-West of Berlin. It was super hot out that day. It took us a 1 hour train ride to get to the location and then we found a place and set up. Eoghan and I walked further down the beach and found this awesome spot where there is a tree right over the water and you can climb it and jump into the lake. 

We spent a while there jumping off of the tree into the water and swinging on the ropes into the water. Later that evening we took the train back home.

Here is the latest Berlin video:

https://youtu.be/HcZuTts8ylE

Geraardsbergen, Bruges, Antwerp!

July 19:

The 19th was Wednesday and it was suppose to be a chill day where we just sat inside all day and relaxed from all our adventures, but it turned out to be more adventurous than we had planned. Kim asked me if I wanted to go on a bike ride with her, so Pierce, Kim and I all decided to bike to a nearby town called Geraardsbergen. It was about a 40 minute bike ride away so Kim made some pasta and packed it so we could eat it in the town. 

We left probably around 1-1:30 PM. It was a very long bike ride, kind of tough to go up some of the hills. We eventually made it there and parked and locked our bikes and walked to a cafe to have a bit of a rest. We saw a lot of the buildings and talked to the cafe owner who was a kind lady. We learned that this mini town dated back to 1100! We also learned of a special pastry called a Mattentaart. According to Wikipedia "The mattentaart was granted Protected Geographical Indication status by the European Union in 2006, indicating they can only be made in Geraardsbergen or in the nearby municipality of Lierde.^[5][6]"

After relaxing for a bit we went to a nearby shop to purchase some mattentaarts. Here is what a Mattentaart looks like:

Here, we found another Manneken Pis statue. They had a whole community that was built around this statue and once a year they would gather and put a new outfit on the statue. We walked into a museum where they had all of the outfits for the statue over the past decades, there were a lot of outfits donated by different people / organizations. 

It happened to be our lucky day because the day we were there was the day that they put a new outfit on the statue so we got to watch the entire ceremony and stuff!

After we watched the unvailing of the new outfit for the Manneken Pis statue, we traveled to the top of a mountain to check out this church and have our picnic. 

We had the pasta and the Mattentaart that we bought, it was very delicious so I wanted to buy a couple more before we biked back home to share with Liam and Dom who had stayed home. We heard thunder and it became darker and more windy and we knew it was about to rain so we thought it would be a good idea to get the bus back. We were able to put our bikes on the bus and took the bus as close to the house as possible then biked the rest of the way. 

July 20:

Today we got up early and caught the 10:40 train to go to Bruges. Once we got there at first we did our own tour just walking around and exploring. A bit into our explorations Kim wanted to go on a free walking tour, so while she did that we went walking more around and checked out some skate shops that we found and walked along the canals and stuff. 



I ended up buying a pair of Nike SB's that are only available to buy at skate shops and they were really nice. I also bought a Thrasher hat at a different skate shop we found. The temperature was perfect that day, I was able to wear a crewneck to protect my arms from the sun but it wasn't crazily hot. 

July 21:

Today we went to Antwerp. We did the same thing as we did the day before and got the 10:40 AM train out of Herne to Antwerp. We walked around the city and the first thing that Liam and I did was hop on some scooters and ride around for a bit. We then went back to try to find Kim, Pierce, Liam and Dom. We met them at a Five Guys and had burgers and fries. It was very tasty. The next thing we did was find some more skate shops and go through them. We then went to the main shopping street and went into a ton of stores to look at clothes and sneakers. That was pretty fun. At Uniqlo there was a deal, 4 pair of socks for 9,90 Euros so I got 4 pairs of socks, 2 black and 2 white. 

Here is the latest youtube video that covers July 20-21st. 

https://youtu.be/QG-QB7tJ9Fw