Back in Berlin - I/2014, day one

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It is a little embarrassing, but... Well. Last year was quite a good year with respect to travels and countries visited, but absolutely crap when it comes to everything else. Let's hope 2014 will be better - and let's start again.

The first journey of the year was a short stay in Berlin with N.. I've been there once already, but I've really really really wanted to go back there. I wanted to show N. places I liked, and so we mostly saw what I’d seen before – with few exceptions though.

We started in Warsaw, after a five hour train journey we arrived at Berlin Ostbahnhof. It's January - so before we sorted out the hostel (A&O, Boxhagener Str. 73) it was already dark and not a good time to explore the city (walk around and take photos I mean). Instead we decided to visit Checkpoint Charlie museum (43-45 Friedrichstraße, 12.5 EUR). It was... OK - I mean, in a way I understand why it was the way it was, but I still found a bit unnerving that the whole exhibition portrayed the Wall as more of an opportunity to an adventure - all those stories about escaping in various sophisticated ways - I don't know, somehow the whole terror was gone, leaving just the action movie part. It's all very nice, interesting, entertaining and absolutely unreal.

After that we walked towards the Unten den Linden Straße and Brandenburger Tor - we were looking for stands with mulled wine and found none – very disappointing (finally we got one in some posh cafe - two in price of one, as they've run out of it and the second glass wasn't full). I wanted to show N. the gas lamp alley in Tiergarten - I've vaguely remembered it being close to one end of the park - not the one we were at that moment though, so it had to be postponed. We managed to find one Irish Bar at Schiffbauer Damm (they had cider, yay) and then we walked towards Oranienburger Straße. I wanted to show N. where the Kunsthaus Tacheles was situated, although now it's just an empty building. We ended up around Hackescher Markt - there are some bars, also an Irish Bar (Kilkenny, cider for 5 EUR), and places that served something that wasn't meat. Too bad it wasn't warm enough to sit outside all the time. We obviously missed every possible last train and such - fortunately the day tickets are valid up to 3 a.m. and there was a bus that took us somewhere near to the hostel. However, we still got a few nightcaps in a funny pizzeria...



A bit about prices: a day ticket in AB zones is 6.40 EUR, mulled wine starts from 1.5 to 3 EUR, cider in Irish pubs is around 5 EUR, we found none in the “normal” bars. The cheapest bed in the hostel we found was for 10 EUR.

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Photos

Berlin 2014
Checkpoint Charlie

Berlin 2014
Checkpoint Charlie