Euro Trip Day 10: Bears on the Loose in Berlin!

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Day 010, Monday June 27

We just passed into Denmark, fifth country on this journey, following England, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. I suddenly realise as I write this that Austen Powers is from England, Dr. Evil is Belgium (he even says he’s from Bruges), and Goldmember is Dutch (from Holland, aka Netherlands). I now find myself having a hard time believing someone so evil could have come from the beauty of Bruges, I didn’t even meet any fifteen year old prostitutes with webbed feet. Now we did have ourselves a “Smoke and a pancake” though actually it was waffles, lots and lots of waffles, even from vending machines. Of course we were sure to have fine chocolates in Belgium, in fact we just got a bag filled with them and munched on them every step of the way while there. And in England we had fish and chips at, what the locals referred to as, the best place in town. So keeping with our pattern we had bratwurst and beer in Germany, particularly in Berlin.

But first let's take a step back for a moment, and revisit the prostitute concept. It is legal in Amsterdam but was kept in a certain area, the red light district, and there were window displays and such. In Germany it is also legal (I think) but they are everywhere, when the night falls the “cats” (as they were called by a girl from Uruguay I met during our pub crawl) come out to play, literally down the sidewalk of 1 city block length you’ll walk past 3 – 5 of them, and if you look down a long straight road it appears a near endless stream of leather bustiers. So yes, we did participate in an organised pub crawl, there were roughly 40, every one of them travellers, not all English speaking. We met people from the states, like Hawaii, Texas, and California, as well as folks from Uruguay, and Australia, and somewhat local people from southern Germany, plus many more folks with funny accents and some barely able to speak English, though one mustered the courage (not difficult considering the amount of alcohol intake by this time) to walk up to a prostitute as we passed and ask “How much? Very nice!” funny thing was, his natural accent was the same as the character Borat anyway, this naturally led to much laughter and carrying on around that joke for some time. It was a great time, free, all you can drink, local beer for the first hour (I had 2, Alyssa 1), then the second, third and fourth bars all provided 1 free shot of Jagermeister with each drink ordered. Alyssa had 2 mix drinks but no shots, and I had 3 mix drinks and only 1 shot, I took advantage of the free shots to give away to girls in order to ingratiate myself with them as it was a perfect conversation starter. The last place we ended up at was a club, we were all piss drunk and fully in the mood to just go crazy, for about an hour the music blasted the latest club anthems, everyone was going nuts dancing and singing with each other, a great group of really happy drunks. I think it was 2 am when we finally arrived back at the hostel and practically passed out. I don't need to explain how difficult it was to drag our sorry asses out of bed at 8 am for breakfast.

Leading up to the epic bar night, we had gotten up at 7 am in order to have the free breakfast and start our tour of Berlin as early as possible to get as much done as we could. We had decided, the night before, to join a free city tour happening at 9 am which about 10 minutes from our hostel. I’ll try to make it brief, we started at Brandenburg Gate, in a square very rich in history (our tour guide was incredible, she was so knowledgeable and spoke intelligently and with great care for her words, you could hear the passion she had for the subject matter). Just around the corner we saw the Reichstag, holocaust memorial, Babelplatz, the sight of the Nazi book burning, and its memorial. The site of Hitler’s chancellery and bunkers (where he killed himself), checkpoint Charlie and SS Headquarters which was used in the film Valkyrie, where they refit the building with its original Nazi trimmings for filming, which caused a bit of a stir locally as not everyone was aware of the filming taking place and symbols of Nazi rule are outlawed in the country. This building was also the only Nazi compound not utterly razed to the ground by allied forces as it was situated in the safe zone and had been abandoned at the end of the war, so troops just drove past it, leaving it alone, while on the way to the final stand against Hitler.

Of course we also saw the remains of the Berlin wall, a small section still standing, we touched it and walked along it, even found some small chunks at the base that obviously belonged to it and didn’t hesitate to grab a souvenir with our own hands. There were many more sights we saw (opera houses, churches, Universities), but we ended our tour on what’s called “Museum Island” named so for the 4 museums on a small bit of land only really separated by a thin bit of river. It would be too much to into everything I learned on the tour, all I can say is there is an unbelievable amount of history in the country, and so very much of it so very recent! I can honestly say my basic knowledge of World War 2 pales to the controversial happens of the country far before and even after the war. I cannot state with enough emphasis my recommendation for anyone travelling to Germany to take up a good city tour, there are many of them, and honestly I feel like I was a part of the best, even if we had to pay I would feel I got more than my money's worth. It's the same company which organized the evening pub crawl (not so free). Neweuroetours.eu if they have tours in other places we go to we plan to take it.

The best part was everything was so local, after the 3 hour tour we simply retraced our steps, and revisited each site to see more of it and take more pictures. BUT that was after we stopped in one of the museums on Museum Island. The Pergamon Museum, sweet Jesus it was incredible, their 2 main permanent attractions are full sized recreations of 3 ancient gateways. The first was the Pergamon Altar, part of the ancient Greek Acropolis (from which the museum takes its name), this is a wide staircase surrounded by a frieze depicting the Greek gods in a mighty battle with the giants, the staircase is a reproduction, but the frieze (pictured) is made up of all the pieces they could excavate, placed in their proper spots and not artificially filled in. It was jaw dropping! This was followed by an adjacent room with another fully assembled gateway, in much better condition, the Market Gate of Miletus. As you passed through this gate you are instantly transported to ancient Babylon, and the Ishtar Gate, a reconstruction filled with as many actual bricks and pieces that have been found, and filled in with artificial ones (but they purposely don’t falsely age the artificial bricks to allow you to see the difference). They also had a façade of a palace in Jordan, and a full and complete royal living space (separated by thick heavy transparent barriers, this was the most complete piece in the museum).

All in all highly entertaining and awe inspiring, par for the daily course on this crazy trip so far.

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Photos

Berlin Bear!
One of many bears across the city, this one decorated in city colours and logos.

Memorial to the dead
A memorial to the Jews who died, only a small section in a very large memorial with hundreds of monoliths and sountless paths, and of various heights.

Former site of Hitler's underground Command Bunker
Now, a parking lot, for no reason except that a parking lot was required in the area, no monument, no memorial, just a small sign showing directions around the city with a small mention of what used to be there.

Picasso
A painting by Picasso, one of only a few in the museum.

Andy Warhol - Red Race Riots
Self explanatory, a few Andy Warhol artworks, this was most striking to me.

Physical construct artwork
Some sort of visually trippy 3 dimensional physical art, changes as you move around the room, very interesting.

Parganon
Re-assembled gates to the Parganon temple, from the Acropolis, in Greece.

Ishtar Gate
The full reconstruction, using actually excavated parts.