A wedding of a dear friend brought me to spend a couple of weeks in Europe this summer. The trip started in Germany. I went a little early before the wedding started to spend time with her and help out with prep for the wedding. She lives about an hour outside of Stuttgart in a small town called Backnag. The wedding took place in Schwabisch Hall which is where the groom is from. There was a small town and the surroundings were a bit more rural. The wedding was a combination of German, Bosnian, and American traditions.
Next we spent a day in the Western wine region called Pfalz. There we went to a few wineries and drove around the country side while exploring a few of the small towns. The landscape was truly beautiful set among all the vineyards. We spent the night in Kaiserslautern and the next day we were off to Berlin!
You see, Germany is hot for about 15 days a year so there is no air conditioning anywhere. You better believe we were there during that heat wave. Actually most of our trip was during unseasonably hot weather. We decided not to really do any touristy things, but instead just explore by walking around.
I remembered seeing on social media that my old friend from Pratt had moved to Berlin. We hadn’t been in touch for quite some time, but I wrote to him in Instagram and we met up the next day for coffee. It was like no time had passed and we just picked up where we left off. That turned out to be such a pleasant surprise of Berlin. He was describing the neighborhoods to us. He mentioned that the young hip people will move into an edgy neighborhood and stay there to settle. So those areas get a bit gentrified and then turn into an area with hip parents and kids. Until, its the next neighborhood’s turn. So, right now Neukolln is a little on the edgier side and still pretty raw in my eyes.
Some of the neighborhoods we hit included: Mitte, Museum Island, Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, Neukolln, Tiergarten
Recommendations for food and drinks: Limonadier, Umami, Amrit, Monsieur Voung, Silo Coffee
Thus ended our time in Germany - next up: Malta!
