Berlin and our Chocolate Tour

Sorry I have been so behind! On September 24th, my friends Shelby, Meghan and I went to Berlin for a three day weekend.  It was an 8 hour train ride, and we tiredly arrived to our hostel, "All In" at 10 PM.  We slept in the next morning and joined the 11 AM free walking tour around Berlin.  It was excellent, and provided a lot of history during its 4 hour duration.  We saw amazing sights such at the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Holocost Memorial, the ground above Hitler's Bunker, the remaining portion of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, many museums, and the Berlin Cathedral.  We also stopped into Starbucks and did some shopping to get our fill of "America" for the day.  I was really impressed by Berlin, and amazed at how much history this capital city had.  We headed home and went to bed early to get ready for the next day.


On Sunday, we decided to go visit a concentration camp on the outside of Berlin.  Sachsenhausen was a work camp, and saw the training of many Nazi soldiers.  It was a really humbling experience and a much more realistic view of the Holocaust then you get from reading a text book.  It was sad to see all of the suffering people went through, and the truly cruel ways that prisoners were tortured and murdered.  All in all it was a sobering day, and we headed home grabbed dinner and a drink and went to bed to get ready for our next adventure!


The next morning we met up with our "Chocolate Business" class to begin our study tour.  A study tour at MUDEC is a week long break where travel and have exposure to the topics we discuss in class.  Our tour was supposed to begin in Koblenz, Germany, but Meghan, Shelby and I missed the boat ride.  Our insructor, instead of giving us an address, gave us a street to meet them on, and no number to call.  They ducked into a building and we could,'t fin them until it was to late and they were on a boat sailing away. Luckily the bus driver was still around and he drove us to the next city so we could get on the next dock.  Once our blood pressure went down and we were seated, the crew served our class dinner and we enjoyed our meal and we coasted down the Rhine.  We arrived in Cologne, Germany late monday night.  We checked into our Hotel, and then headed out to a local pub.  It was a fun night and Miami definitely took over that club.




Tuesday we had a jam packed day of sightseeing.  It began with a tour of the Lindt Chocolate Museum, where we learned some history (or taught them history in some cases) and tasted some chocolate.  Later on we headed to the Cologne Cathedral, which was absolutely stunning.  It houses the remains of the Three wise men, and has towers with 509 steps.  And yes we went up them.  It was a stunning view from the top, but we were all so tired by the time we got down.  After we regrouped, we headed back to the bus and and began the second half of our trip to Brussels.  We arrived at the Hotel Du Congress and were immediately whisked off to a sit down dinner at Pizza Hut. No joke. And it was delicious. Later that night the group headed out to Delirium, the bar we had previous visited our first weekend away and which we love!


The next morning was some serious chocolate tasting. It was serious stuff and by about the fifth store I never wanted to taste chocolate again! It was a great experience though and chocolate from the US will never seem the same again! We even got to make our own chocolate at one place, which was really awesome.  I had to wear a white apron and a white bakers hat (super stylish).  After that we went to visit someone I would call a real life Willy Wonka.  Not only did he have great sweets, he could do magic tricks and looked a little mid like a mad scientist.  It was a great experience but we were so tired it was hard to really appreciate it.  We rounded the night off with a fancy dinner in the city and drinks in the Grand Place while we watched the light show.  Thursday was the last day of our study tour, and we headed to Brugge for the day.  We got a historical overview and a personal tour of the sights.  We also visited a place called the Chocolate Line where we all snorted chocolate! It was so bizarre, but really cool and we were able to taste the chocolate for about 15 minutes.  After that we headed back to Brussels to start our next trip, which was to London!