Normally when there’s a holiday in the U.S., I’m reminded by all my American Twitter and Facebook friends that they’re enjoying a day off, while I’m slaving away here in Europe (I’m only half kidding about the slaving away part). And when I have a day off, which is usually some Christian holiday I’ve barely heard of before moving to Germany (like Pfingsten, also known as Pentecost/Whitsun in English), no one back home has any idea what I’m talking about. But as luck would have it this year, Memorial Day in the U.S. coincided yesterday with Pfingstmontag in Deutschland — three-day weekends as far as the eye can see!
We had an out-of-town visitor during our holiday weekend and had plenty of adventures, sun and caipirinhas on Sunday in Kreuzberg at the Karneval der Kulturen. I spent a lot of time and energy photographing last year’s Carnival of Cultures (which you can check out here), so this year I chilled and just enjoyed myself.
On Monday we got ice cream cones at our favorite organic ice cream place, wandered around the RAW grounds, had a drink and checked out the climbers in Cassiopeia‘s beer garden. Now that the weather is nice again, this is my favorite place to spend a sunny weekend afternoon, plus the whole grounds are absolutely eye candy for photographers.
Later in the afternoon we rented a pedal-boat and chilled on the water along Treptower Park for awhile. (Sorry, no photos of that because mein Schatz and I spent most of the time pedaling while our hungover friends snoozed in the back.) And since we were in the neighborhood, we also checked on the Soviet War Memorial, which I’d never seen before.
The memorial is meant to commemorate 5,000 of the 80,000 Soviet soliders (there are two other memorials in the city too) that died in the Battle of Berlin in 1945 (according to Wikipedia), and the scale is immense and extremely impressive.
We happened to arrived during what photographers like to call the golden hour, so I did my best to give the memorial justice with only my Samsung Galaxy as a camera (and a little help from Instagram). If you happen to be in Berlin, I would highly recommend a visit — it’s a lovely, peaceful place to spend some time away from the hustle and bustle.
We ended the day with Indian food around the corner from us, and I crashed into bed once we got home. All in all, a really lovely and relaxing weekend!
How was your long weekend? Do you do some traveling? Or make it a staycation? Do tell!
Mmm, I miss eis! Wow – the park and the memorial look like a very calm, peaceful place to visit. I remember Berlin being so very high energy so it would be nice to have a place to go to get away from the frenetic pace.
Exactly — the memorial is a surprising contrast to the rest of Berlin and definitely worth a visit.
That memorial looks cool – I’ve been to Berlin several times, but never even heard of it.
I hadn’t either, and was surprised by how big it is, hidden away in the middle of Treptower Park. I would certain recommend spending some time there.