Free Bike Tour...almost!

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I went on a bike tour in the arvo today. It was a free tour which I'd heard about from an Aussie couple at one of the coffee shops in Amsterdam. In fact, I found out that there are free walking and bike tours in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Munich - definitely worth knowing about! It was a 4-hour tour jam-packed with Berlin history. I saw left-over WWII bullet scars on some of the buildings, museuminsel (museum island), Berliner Dom (old church), Bradenburger Tor (gate), Reichstag (again), and Bebelplatz. Bebelplatz was where some pro Nazi students and university staff burnt all the books in the adjacent Humbolt University library that were not pro-Nazi in 1933. Today the University actually sells copies of all the books that were burnt back then in a street stall out front of the Uni. The tour also took me to the German cathedral, French Cathedral, Concert Hall, remnants of the Berlin Wall, Topography of Terror, Opera building, Tiergarten (massive city park where the locals sunbathe naked...not today though), Siegessaute (the towering Victory Column), and Hitler's Bunker (the ground above where it used to exist at least). The bunker was where Hitler and his wife killed themselves. I really enjoyed the tour. The weather fined up and the guide was awesome. She used to be a catwalk model and actress, so really it was more than a tour, it was like watching a performance. Since the free tours run off tips though, I guess the guides have a lot of motivation to please. I felt more than happy to tip 10 Euros, as most people did, since the paid tours are about double that.

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