We're off.....Flight to Berlin & First Day in the City

We are off! Yesterday we took the train from New Haven to Grand Central Station and then the subway and AirTrain to JFK. Our flight to Germany did not take off as planned and we sat on the runway for forever. After flying through the night last night, we landed in Dusseldorf Germany on Monday morning later than expected and ended up missing our connection. Thankfully, Air Berlin was on the ball and got us on the next flight to Berlin at 10:50am. We arrived in Berlin around 12, and had to navigate the bus system to our hostel. We did ok, and managed to find it even though it was way in the middle of nowhere!

Talk about off the beaten path! Our hostel, the JetPak Eco Lodge is down this dirt path in the back woods off of this ritzy neighborhood. When we arrived, we met a guy named Patrick who showed us our room and told us a little about the area. The place is great! We were exhausted from our travels, but decided to venture out anyway. It was late afternoon, 3:30ish and we decided to head outside the city to check out our first concentration camp. We took the bus to the S-Bahn and then took the S-Bahn out to Oranlenburg and Camp Sachsenhausen.

The walk from the station to the camp was a little over a mile, but it felt like so much longer. We were exhausted, at this point we had been on the go for over 24 hours! We walked around the camp for awhile, pretty powerful stuff.

It took us about an hour to get back, both of us dozed off on the train. We were exhausted. Our plan was to go to the grocery store on the way back to the hostel, but it ended up being closed. We found a little restaurant with outdoor seating and watched the Chile v. Brazil soccer game. We ordered a few beers and a pizza, and wandered back to the hostel around 9pm. On our walk back we had a hilarious encounter with some wild boars. They came out of the bushes right near us, scared the crap out of us! Andy and I ran across the street, but then when we noticed the 'locals' weren't bothered by them, we realized they were pretty harmless.

When we got back to the hostel we crashed, Day 1 & 2 are done....we had been on the go for 29 hours!