Berlin, Germany

** Quick Note: This trip was taken in 2007, photographed with an 8 megapixel point and shoot camera, and written from the perspective of a 22 year old who had never blogged before. Enjoy :) **

There was a summer reading program at the library when we were young. We would get points on a card for every book we finished. I remember filling my library bag with as many books as I could possibly check out and then stacking them up on the piano bench when we got home. I would lie under the piano… weird?!?… and start reading through that stack. I won a prize at the end of that summer because I had read more than any of the other kids. The prize was probably a braided bracelet or bubbles, or something equally as exciting.The point of my little early-life recap is not so much that I read a lot in strange places, but that my books of choice fell consistently in the historical fiction genre. Specifically the World War II era.

People always seem surprised when I say Berlin is one of my favorite of the places I have visited. Maybe it was because I couldn’t understand a single guttural word that was uttered. Maybe it was the 1/8 German in my blood. Or maybe I just enjoyed experiencing the rich history of the city from somewhere other than under a piano.