The second day in Berlin we went to an underground bunker where German women and children would go to during the bombings. Unfortunately for them, the tourguide explained to us that the Nazi's who built it didn't reinforce the ceiling so if a bomb had hit it it would have went straight through. A pretty useless bunker if you ask me. It was really strange being in the bunker that was built for 30 people but typically held up to 90 people for 15 hours +. You can imagine how nasty that would get if you couldn't leave a room the size of a living room for 15 hours with 90 other people. It was also a unique experience seeing World War II history from the eyes of the people of Berlin. You never really get their perspective on what happened as they were the bad guys. But the bombings of Berlin decimated their city and ruined alot of innocent lives as well.
After we went to this really expensive restaurant (75 Euros per plate) on DIS's dime. This was not your typical restaurant. All the waitors and waitresses were legally blind. To make it even more interesting, they take you into a completely pitch black room where you eat your dinner. To keep everything as intended the guests are asked to turn off all phones and ipods, as well as watches that have a glowing function.
At first everything was disorienting because the waitress congo-lines you through this zig zagged hallway. She sits you down and explains how the meal will work. If you need to go to the bathroom you need to call her over and she will guide you there. Basically it is like you are at a regular restaurant but you have to make sure you remember where all your utensils are exactly.
After the first five minutes in complete darkness, everyone pretty much expected their eyes to adjust and atleast be able to see somethings. But no, the room was completely devoid of light. It was so strange because your mind would try to fill in the blanks and you would actually think you were seeing things. When someone at your table would talk you would think you could see their sillouette but if you waved your arm infront of them nothign would change so you knew that you weren't actually seeing them. Most of us even had visual hallucinations. Random colors, shapes, and floating things would appear. If you looked up sometimes you would even think you could see stars. It was MIND BOTTLING.
When the food came it was so hard to eat with a knife and fork that pretty much everyone admitted to eating it all with their hands. We had some sort of asian inspired salad to start. Then we had soup and bread, and then some sort of turkey meal. The funny thing was, everyone in the class had the same thing ordered for them. None of us knew what it was before hand. When the turkey came out half of the table thought we were eating Steak. It was so weird that even your mind can change the flavor of something. Half way through mostly everyone realized it was actually turkey. Some other funny things that happened were when the waitress asked who needed refills and everyone at the table raised their hands. I commented that I raised my hand and everyone else said they did the same thing. Guess its just a habit.
After dinner we decided to call it a night since we were all whooped from the night before.
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