Tue May, 28 - 11:30 (Depart for Amsterdam)

Once we left Starbucks, we immediately headed to the U Bahn in the direction of the Ritter Sport store, which we stopped in briefly on Sunday.

We checked out the small exhibit they had which explains the entire process of the company, from harvesting the cacao beans by the equator, to grinding the beans to a fine powder, to adding in the cacao butter, milk, and sugar to finally packaging the bars. I learned that the cacao pod is actually a fruit that grows about 15-25 cm. The cacao pod contains a collection of cacao beans that encompass 7-10 cm. Another cool thing was they showed the development of advertising by having a Ritter Sport commercial from every decade from the 1950s to today. The store had a cafe section where Ricky and I ordered a chocolate crepe with warm apples and vanilla ice cream. It was very delicious!

Then we proceeded to buy 5 pounds of chocolate, buying mostly the special bars that would not be available to buy in the U.S. Additionally, we bought Carroll a Ritter Sport polo shirt. The 20 chocolate bars and polo still only cost €32. At €0.89 a bar, we knew it was much cheaper than buying one in the U.S.

Then we went back to Laura's house. Laura took us to an amazing doner kebab restaurant (though it was more of a kebab stand) that was a 20 minute walk from her apartment. I was so excited to finally sink my teeth into a real doner kebab from Germany since I had not had a German doner kebab after going to Germany my senior year in high school. I devoured the entire thing with satisfaction, knowing that this would be my first and last German kebab on this trip. I could probably find a doner kebab in the Netherlands, but I want to continue to eat new foods throughout my journey and I know Amsterdam will have even more exotic foods than I will have time to try.
We hopped on the S Bahn and took it to the Solar (lounge/restaurant) which is located on the top of a 20-story building. The view was great since the walls were all glass. They even had projectors showing visual graphics on the bar and it cycled through tons of animations, including some famous buildings in Berlin.  Ricky ordered a drink called the Watermelon Man, Laura ordered a mango and club soda drink, and I ordered a Honolulu Cooler. They were all very tasty. On our walk back to Laura's house, she gave us each a beer to drink since it is legal to drink in the streets and on public transportation in Berlin. We talked the entire way home and carried the conservation until we got ready for bed. We thanked Laura and told her to come visit us in the U.S. in the future. She said she would love to and that she wanted to go to Las Vegas. We agreed that once she and Ricky turned 21, we should go to Vegas. Also, she told us that she has skied in Austria and could pick us up from an airport if we ever wanted to arrange a trip. How fun that would be! Austria is one of the best places to ski in the world.
We all feel asleep with ease as we were fatigued.

In the morning, Ricky and I left for our train that departed at 6:38. Once we found our seats, Ricky fell back asleep almost immediately, where I was too excited about arriving in Amsterdam to sleep. Instead, I read and finished "Around the World in 80 Days." It was such a greatly entertaining adventure book that perfectly prepared me mentally for my own adventures. It kept me intrigued until the last page and I could not have loved the ending more. It was all about a girl at the conclusion of the story. I can't wait til Barbara finishes the book as it was our first book of our book club. We want to continue and read lots of great books together.

Now, it is about noon and I will arrive in Amsterdam in an hour.

Adventure awaits me.

Mon May 27 - 16:30 (Berlin)

This morning, I slept til 10:30. It was great since we slept on a bus the night before. Laura suggested we try Curry Wurst so that was the first thing we ate. It was two wursts (sausages) with seasoning and ketchup served with fries. The place we ordered from was right next to the D Bahn (train station) so we purchased our tickets to Amsterdam. Then we set off to find the Tiergarden. It was only a few U Bahn stops away.

We walked to the center where the Berlin Victory Column was. Inside was a museum that told the history of the Victory Column as well as many other German monuments like the Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, and many other monuments made in the 1800s to celebrate the victories of the German Empire. The museum also had models of the monuments including a few exhibits of big monuments in other countries such as the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Empire State Building and more. We climbed the narrow, spiral staircase to the top of the monument. From the top, we had an incredible view of the Tiergarden and the surrounding Gate and the Reichstag in the distance. One more interesting thing to note is the Victory Column is where the Love Parade event was held.

After walking out of the Tiergarden, we took the U Bahn to Potsdamer Platz and saw the Berlin Wall. They had a project to mark the entire city with a line of where the wall used to be. Most of the wall was taken down, but they saved some parts of it. An interesting fact is they turned a lot of the open space from where the wall was to parks and open areas for the city. During the Cold War, the city continued to grow and space inside the city shrank so this was a perfect opportunity to have more open space in the city. I learned that the "Berlin Wall" was much wider than a wall because it was composed of 2 walls with an open space in the middle (maybe about 50 feet). This space was heavily guarded by both sides.

We are now writing in our journals in a Starbucks. We were going to eat a snack in the Sony Center nearby, but they didn't have any cafes open, only restaurants.

Sun May 26 - 23:55 (Berlin)

What a busy day! After our Polski Bus dropped us off at 8:15 am (departing from Warsaw at 23:00), we found our way to the U Bahn and walked to Laura's apartment in Berlin. Her roommate, Veronika, let us in. We put down our things, changed clothes for the new day, and set off for some breakfast- not fulling realizing we would not be able to get back in until 21:00  when Veronika got back from being out of the apartment.
After eating sandwiches, we ventured through the city. To be honest, we wondered more at first since we didn't have a map. We decided to go to the Pergamon Museum, which was an amazing exhibit on classical civilization, Islamic civilization, and Ancient Near East civilization. It was located on Museum Island. Afterwards, we walked back to the U Bahn and found a Ritter Sport store and bought some chocolate. We snacked on a peppermint Ritter Sport bar and it is now my favorite peppermint chocolate bar. Then Ricky tried to get tickets to see Hamlet at a German Theatre, but it was sold out. We got a great meal right after at Graffiti Cafe where we ordered wiener schnitzel and German beer. Following the food, we took the U Bahn to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag.

We came back to Laura's neighborhood at 9 and Veronika let us in. We got to talk with her for a good while. She was a very nice person. At midnight, Laura came home and we caught up with her before going to sleep.

Sat May 25 - 18:00 (Warsaw)

This morning, Gedeon made Ricky and me another great Polish breakfast. He cooked Polish hot dogs, scrambled eggs and prepared salmon. We ate bread, tomatoes and plum cake. After eating, Gedeon drove us to the Warsaw Rising Museum before leaving us for the last time. We thanked him again for all his hospitality and generosity. He was happy that he could host us on our first segment of our journey.

The Warsaw Rising Museum was very informative and told a detailed history about Warsaw from the start of WWII on September 1, 1939 to after the war, when Poland turned into a communist state.

Before the war, Warsaw's population was 1.3 million people. Then it went down to 900,000. By the end of the war, only 1000 people stayed in the city of ruins. It was amazing that they created the most successful counterfeiting scheme during the Nazi occupation as a way to 'get money' for weapons and supplies. The Warsaw Underground gathered a militia of Poles together for an uprising in 1944. They requested help from the allies (who joined Poland in declaring war on Germany in 1939) but they never came to their aid. Stalin was supposed to give them support, but never acted. Stalin said that the Poles were dumb for trying to overthrow the Nazi's by themselves. Then after the war ended, Stalin imposed communism to the country which continued the hardship they had to face for decades longer until the Berlin Wall fell.