La Vida via Roma

Scusa, mi Italiano non molto bueno...

Greetings from Rome! I arrived here on Friday night after a 23 hour transit from Berlin. I actually intended to go to Florence first, but I learned too late that virtually all trains (or at least the fast trains) need to have reservations. Trains to Florence happened to be full, so I went to Rome instead. But that turned out to work in my favor. I met a couple people who were staying there for the weekend and happened to speak German (and Italian, which was helpful, too...they happened to be taking an intensive Italian course over the summer). We hung out for most of the weekend together, which was a nice break from traveling alone.

Anyway, here are some photos from Rome (and I'm in some of them, which proves I've been there!)St. Peters Cathedral
Step 1 of 551 up to the top of St. Peter's (it wasn't that bad, actually)

The Vatican: somewhere in there lives the Pope.
St. Paul's Cathedral:

No need to tell you what that is:
Old Rome:
In St. Peter's Cathedral
The Pantheon:


Piazza di Popolo, as seen from the park above it.
St. Peter's by night:


The Pantheon:

1 Hour Photos

Photos are here! The following posts contain photos from Berlin, Ravensbrück, Lübeck and Hamburg, but the photos themselves are in no particular order (just a disclaimer). Also, I apologize for the pictures that are facing sideways. I will ammend that when I'm back in the U.S.

Enjoy!

Tomorrow I should be in Italy!

Berlin

The Reichstag, built entirely out of delicious chocolate!
The first public toilet in Germany.
The front of the fan mile. I was a little further back when I watched the semi-final yesterday (there were obviously a lot more fans then).
Unter den Linden. How many tourists can you fit on one street?
Back of the U.S. Embassy. It opens on the 5th of July.
At the Pergamon Museum: Torso of the perfect man.
Plants growing, yes, at a 90° angle in a picture that is, yes, at a 90° angle.
In front of the Altes Museum.
Sony Center.
City library.
The Holocaust Memorial.
Berliner Dom. Beautiful enough from the outside.
Pergamon altar, Pergamon Museum.

The relatively new central train station. Supposedly it's getting a longer roof sometime soon.
The Reichstag.
Das Tiergarten.
Front of the U.S. Embassy on Pariser Platz.
Brandenburger Tor.

Ravensbrück + Lübeck

Ravensbrück concentration camp:

Uckermark concentration camp:
I biked to Uckermark 'Youth Protection Camp' by myself on Sunday, which is honestly one of the scariest things I've ever done. There was absolutely nobody around, and Uckermark only has a small memorial built at one end of the camp (which is now slightly overgrown). There's something creepy about being at a former concentration camp alone...
This photo should look really familiar to some people.
Lübeck, the new UNESCO World Heritage site.




This cathedral was erected in 90 years (very few compared to most cathedrals in Europe). According to legend, the devil thought the building was going to be a bar, so he helped out and the building went faster. When he finally figured out it was going to be a church, he took this boulder and was preparing to smash it when one of the workers made a compromise and promised to build a bar across the street. You can still see the devil's finger marks in the stone.