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Published: June 23rd 2009
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Berlin is great, a city that is open to expression and cultural diversity. It is definitely the place I want to be 😄
I arrived Sunday afternoon and didn't really do to much, I grabbed some food and just wandered around close by to the hostel.
When I got up I planned to do what I do in each city if it's available, a walking tour. I thought it started at 2pm, but it didn’t it started at 1pm so I had to wait until 4pm.
I decided to walk there as it’s cheaper, you see more of the city and the weather was beautiful. I first walked to the central train station as I wanted to see if I could change my train ticket so I could go and see Nine Inch Nails 😄. The woman advised I could do it over the internet…what a waste of time (when I got home later I actually found I couldn’t do it over then net, I cancelled my reservation and made a completely new one. It still worked out cheaper 😊).
I proceeded to try and locate the meeting point for the free tour, it did take me a little while to
find the Star Bucks which it was at.
The tour was awesome as per usual; it covered a lot of the main attractions and gave me a good feel for the city. We saw the Jewish holocaust memorial, which was a collection of stone blocks that was designed by Peter Eisnsman and inspired by the Jewish graves in Prague that I have seen. The graves in Prague were on rolling hills, and as it was so old and there were so many dead in it that most of the grave stones weren’t straight, some were touching and they were at different heights.
We also covered the death of Hitler, Mick (the tour guide) pointed out where Hitler’s bunker was as well as where his body was burnt after he and his newly wed wife committed suicide.
We of course saw some of the remains of the Berlin wall, you can see in the street the line of where the Berlin wall once stood. You can actually follow it on the street all 140 kilometers of it. Mick explained the great history of Berlin throughout the tour, but I thought the story of all the events that lead up to the
Berlin wall and the horrible things that happened to this nation were the most interesting.
Watch this i thought it was a really good short clip that summed up the Berlin wall :
After the tour I went to the Reichstag building (German parliament), I started queuing up at about 8:30pm and didn’t get in till about 9:30pm, Mick had told me it would be a long wait but it would be well worth it and it was.
You got to go up (after very strict security checks) on top of the building and also in top the giant glass Bundestag dome (designed by Norman Foster) that stood on top of it. The dome gives you a 360 degree look of the city and it’s free! 😄. There are mirrors covering a cone that points down in to the parliament seating which you can see in to(this is to show that the German government has nothing to hide and is open to it’s people), the mirrors direct sunlight in to the room. The views were amazing, the sunset was beautiful also.
When I got back to the hostel there were about 8 people sitting around having drinks and I decided to sit and socialize. They were all cool, a few Aussies, a couple of Swiss, a Canadian, a Frenchie and a Spanish girl, it was a good mix. We sat around, smoked shisha and had a laugh…good times.
So far I believe that Berlin will become my favorite city, the culture it’s self has a feel to it that I don’t think any other place has had so far. As the city was in lock down for such a long time they are now starving for self-expression, culture and creativity.
Josh…over and out.
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Melinda
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I love all these photos, it makes me remember Berlin, I too loved Berlin. If you get the chance you should go to a restaurant called White Trash, from memory its a little pricey but great burgers and really cool inside. Also the new Europe group run a tour of the first concentration camp which is very moving if you get the chance to do that. I hope you enjoy Berlin, its an amazing city. xoxoxo