Berlin: What to Do & What to Eat

Every summer since we have been together, Mike and I make a point to get away for a week, usually traveling to Central America or the Caribbean. This year I really wanted to go to Europe. It had been a few years since I'd been transatlantic and was dying to get back, even if that meant leaving my relaxing beach week behind.

We ended up settling on Berlin for a few reasons. For one, I had always wanted to go there since I did my study abroad in Rome. My roommates went for a weekend and said they had a blast. Secondly, Berlin is billed as being pretty cheap for a major European capital. Now having returned, I can vouch for that. We spent less money than we did on our honeymoon in Costa Rica and I still have euros left over!

Running aside, there is plenty to do in Berlin and we easily filled 8 days with activities. I won't torture you with the 500+ photos that I took. Instead, here is a sampling:

Complimentary breakfast every morning at the hotel usually included green tea, fruit salad, yogurt with muesli (there's so much muesli in Europe!) and toast or a roll with jam

We walked 3-6 miles every day cruising the sites and just enjoying the city:

Cool sculpture on Kurfurstendamm Strasse

Potsdamer Platz

The Bode Museum. We saw 15+ museums and memorial sites

Schloss Sanssouci in Potsdam

At the Reichstag on a gloomy day

Berlin Wall Memorial

At the Berlin Zoo

On our last day, when we felt comfortable with the roads, we rented biked and cruised around for 6 hours

I've never seen so many cyclists in any city. All ages. Everywhere. 

Food-wise, I can't recommend Berlin enough. Surprisingly we ate cuisine from all over the world except for traditional German fare. The city is extremely diverse and international. You can find everything from Chinese to Italian to Vietnamese to Ethiopian.

Bruschetta for one? Yes please! From one of the many amazing food trucks at the Sunday flea market, Flohmarkt am Mauerpark

From another flea market cart - perfectly ripe watermelon spears in a cup

So many wonderfully delicious quick-stop cafes for pizza and panini

Many scrumptious salads were eaten:

But don't worry. I ate lots of dessert too!

And you better believe I raided the grocery store our last night to smuggle these treats home. I won't tell you how long it took me to go through them

Lastly, this is Germany, so of course there was beer:

They were all awesome and all as cheap as a bottle of sparkling water 

And wine. We can't forget about cheap, delicious, European wine

We now return you to your regularly scheduled running programming. 

49 Miles in Berlin

Forgive the absence. Mike and I just returned from a wonderful 8 days in Berlin. I will save the trip details for a later post. Right now I just want to talk about the running!

I ran six days in Berlin and covered 49 miles total. 35 of those were outside. The rest were on the ol' mill in the hotel. We spent the first day sleeping in as late as we wanted since we had been up 27 hours from traveling. On day two, however, we were ready to rock and roll! I had two long runs planned for each weekend, both 13 miles.

Since we had barely been around the city at that point I tried to map the simplest route possible. It ended up being very easy to follow and we saw a lot of great sites along the way! I think running is the best way possible to see a new place.

We left around 7 am so the streets were nice and quiet. I should also mention that the summer temps in Berlin are 55/75 with no observable humidity. Yeah, pretty much heaven. That's how summer should be, in my opinion.

The Tiergarten aka the Central Park of Berlin

Mike at the Victory Column

Approaching Museumsinsel

At the Brandenburger Tor

Along the Spree River

On our way back through Potsdamer Platz I found the wall line

I was really good about remembering to bring the long run basics with me - handheld water bottle, compression socks, body glide. I did, however, forget about fuel. I don't use gels and instead look for licorice, fig newtons, etc. I actually brought a bag of swedish fish with me specifically for the long run, but got too hungry on the plane and all of a sudden WOOPS! they were gone. Rather than test new food in a new place, we decided to forego the fuel. If we were running any longer it would have been really tough at the end, but 13.5 miles on a banana and piece of baguette for breakfast ended up working out okay. I only started getting ravenous during the last mile.

It's amazing what a weather change will do for your pace. I felt totally relaxed and casual, using minimal effort, and we ended up running both long runs in the low 9's. Crazy considering a 10 minute pace felt like a death the week before on the east coast.

Other than taking the scenery and enjoying the weather, the runs were pretty uneventful. I did fall flat on my face at mile 12 of our first long run. Too busy looking at pretty dresses in the store window. Thankfully I was unscathed except for an annoying bruise on my right hip bone and some dirty hands and knees.

I think the strangest thing about running in Berlin was just not seeing that many other runners. Considering the city hosts one of the world's best marathons every fall, I would have thought Berlin to be a runner's haven. Don't get me wrong, we did see some, especially on our second long run when we headed into the Tiergarten more and ditched the tourist hot spots. However I could probably count them on two hands. Strange indeed.

In my next post I will talk about the most important part of any vacation - the FOOD!

Exhaustion and Rest Days

After a bit of a set back after the River Towns Marathon, I am very happy to be running pretty much back to normal. Normal being my usual 5 days per week of Tue-Wed-Thurs-Sat-Sun. I am also quite excited to be biking to work again. Our ride is about 16 miles round trip on a fairly flat path (except for the monster 0.2 mile hill to my front door). Over the winter I rarely biked. I just couldn't take the cold. And then it was cold until like April 30th so I wasn't doing much before then. And then I was in marathon recovery and then ITBS recovery and so it was only last week that I finally biked to and from work all five days.

Even though last summer I was managing 50 mpw running and the 75 mpw biking to and from work, my body definitely needs to adjust to get to that point. I realized yesterday that I've either biked, run, or more often done both every day the last 9 days. This explains why I am absolutely exhausted. I did practically nothing all weekend and I still barely dragged myself out of bed this morning. I know some of this is not just exercise related, but also leftover from the end of my summer class last week. Up until last Thursday evening, I had been in class 12 straight months. I am mentally and physically exhausted!

 I wish someone would carry me around when I got too sleepy to walk

Finally this morning I convinced myself to take the bus instead of biking and take a real rest day. It's easy for me to want to go-go-go all of the time, but without rest days you end up overtrained and overtired. Nine days is far too long to wait and in fact my paces were alraedy suffering late last week, which should have been a sign to take a day off. In the future I am going to keep Monday a true rest day, even if that means taking the stinky, slow bus.