Berlin

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A very early start in Amsterdam on 18 July saw us spending our last minutes in the city 'mastering' their tram system. (Not all that easy when you have no idea how to pronounce the place you're trying to get to.) We did make it to Zeeburg by 7:45am as required, though, and so began our adventures with Busabout. (For the record, if anyone's planning a Europe trip in the near future, we would definitely recommend this crowd - they have good prices, flexible travel dates, and informative tour guides.)

The trip to Berlin was a long one, though fortunately with plenty of rest stops along the way to stretch our legs and find food. By the time we arrived, then found our hotel on the outskirts of Mitte (the city centre - Mitte as a whole seems to be a pretty nice area in East Berlin, but the part of it where we were staying wasn't), it was well after dark. We checked in and unloaded our backpacks, then head off in search of an ATM and food (unfortunately required in that order). Both were eventually found at a shopping centre at the nearby train station, where we were the last people left dining in a Mexican restaurant that we were very grateful to for staying open for us... (even though Australian Mexican food trumps German Mexican food any day.)

The next morning we head back in to a more populated part of town to catch a hop on-hop off tour bus that would take us around all the major sites in both East and West Berlin - the Brandenburg Gate, Charlottenburg Palace, the designer-shopping avenue Kurfürstendamm, Potsdamer Platz, the Jewish Museum, and Checkpoint Charlie, to name a few. One comment that stuck with us on this tour was that describing Berlin as "the world's largest construction site" - everywhere we went there was some form of restoration project or new development going on.

We finished the day back in Alexanderplatz, a large open square in Mitte which holds the Fernsehturm, a 368 metre tall television tower. We took the lift up to the top of the tower to look at the impressive views across the city, then had dinner in the revolving restaurant up there.

On Friday, our final full day in Berlin, we took a closer look at some of the sites we'd gone past on the bus previously, in particular the Brandenburg Gate and the nearby Jewish Memorial, an eerie structure consisting of 2711 concrete blocks laid out on the ground that can be walked through from all sides. For lunch we bought a currywurst, a traditional Berlin takeaway food consisting of German sausage with curry powder and tomato sauce (it kind of seems to be the Berlin equivalent of our meat pie), then we spent most of the afternoon over on the west side of the city, in the Kaufhaus des Westens ("Department Store of the West"), or KaDeWe, a seven-floor shopping centre which is apparently the largest in mainland Europe.

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Photos

Ampelmann
Ampelmann means "little traffic light man". The red and green men on pedestrian lights in East Berlin have a little more character than your average traffic light man, and have become kind of a mascot for the city.

Sculpture
Berlin has a lot of interesting sculptures.

Berlin Wall marker
Not much of the Berlin wall actually remains standing, but this marker runs right along the ground where it once stood.

Berlin Wall
One of the few parts of the Wall left standing.

Checkpoint Charlie
A crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War.

Berlin
View from TV tower

In the Tiergarten
View of the Brandenburg Gate from in the Tiergarten, a huge garden in Berlin.

Reichstag
Houses of parliament.

Sandcastle
We came across an impressive sandcastle competition taking place.

Berlin Berlin
A sculpture in Kürfurstendamm.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
Located on Kurfürstendamm, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church consists of the ruins of an old church built in the late 19th century that was destroyed in WW2, as well as a new church built right next to it.

Comments

[Sally]

Wow!
Holy Shmolly, that's one big sausage!