New Year's Eve in Berlin and Warsaw

あけまして おめでとう ございます。 Happy New Year! Feliz año! :)

I wanted to celebrate the new year's eve 2008-09 in a different way. First I thought about walking the road to Santiago once again and celebrate it in Santiago, but I gave up when I saw that the weather was getting worse. Finally, I celebrated it with Maria (Inspiring SU and Cambridge) and it was a great trip to two of the main european capitals: Berlin and Warsaw.

• Berlin: The first thing I noticed about Berlin was the amount of graffities on the walls. Apart from that, my impression of the city was that of a typical european one with its metro, buildings, and so on. People spoke English almost everywhere so it was easy to get around. Due to the globalization you also find the same shops as everywhere (starbucks :D) which makes you feel a bit like at home at any time.
  
  We met at Alexanderplatz station, whose big tower can be seen from all around the city and somehow ressembled a urban lighthouse to me.
  
  I wanted to find things about the 2nd world war, the nazis or the holocaust because I had been reading about it before coming. In Berlin, I saw a piece of the famous Wall that used to separate the East from the West, an American-Soviets checkpoint and the holocaust memorial. It seemed to me that the Nazi symbols and history were all sort of hidden because the war is still quite recent.
  


• Warsaw: From Berlin we took a train to Warsaw, which takes around 5 hours. As we arrived a bit late, we only had time to have dinner and go to bed.
  
  Polish food is really tasty as I already knew from my trip to the Bieszczady in September. Maria's mum prepared some food that was a pleasure to eat.
  
  The next day, Maria took me to see the city and visit some museums. The Warsaw Rising museum was very interesting. There were loads of photos, uniforms, weapons and history but we had too little time to see everything. At the time, the Polish had to hide in underground paths like the one shown in the picture which was quite claustrophobic.
  
  We also visited the Polish militar museum where we saw lots of tanks and planes from the 2nd World War. It is interesting to notice that I saw more Nazi armament and symbols in Poland than in Berlin.
  
  The city was almost completely destroyed in the 2nd War and it has been rebuilt from scratch. Nowadays it is quite a modern city and in the center of the city the visitor can admire some wonderful skyscrapers like the Palace of Culture and Science above.