Berlin and Buddy Bears

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Our flight was delayed leaving a Rome so we landed later than expected in Berlin. The directions we had from our Airbnb host was to grab a bus to Alexanderplatz and it would be a 10 minute walk from there. Got the bus ticket and what we thought was the right bus. Very packed. The whole trip the driver is making announcements in German and we can hear the word Alexanderplatz but (wrongly it turns out) assumed that it was about where the bus would terminate. Not the case as we got dumped off the bus somewhere in the middle of no where. So we wandered using google offline maps to the closest train station and after much frustration finally made our way to a station closer to our accommodation. Logged into the wifi network outside the building (seemed a perfectly normal thing to do!) and messaged our host and were let up shortly after.

Accommodation exactly as described, studio apartment. King sized bed with some small cupboards, small round table, tiny kitchenette and a bathroom with a washer. Turns out the person letting us in though didn't speak English. So she talked non stop in her language (not even sure it was German) as she showed us how to use the locks, washer and entrance doors and talked about cleaning. Clear as mud. Given it was already after 7pm at this stage after she left it was time to chuck on washing and go out to grab some dinner. Ended up being a burger and beer and then on the way back grabbed some basic groceries for breakfast. Back at the accommodation it was time for a second load of washing and bed.

Next morning it was a slower start to head off to the Berliner Unterwelton. Unfortunately for their tours you can only buy tickets at their office on the day if the tour. Not knowing how quickly the would sell out we joined a line at their offices 15 minutes before they opened and more than an hour before the tour itself.

Unfortunately for us the tour started with about 100 stairs straight up, followed by more throughout the tour, both up and down. After climbing St Peters dome yesterday I found it hard going.

Our tour was of one of the 'flak' towers which were used by Hitler to defend Berlin from enemy aircraft. Three or four were built over Berlin, with all of them blown up after the war. Only the flak tower in Humboldthain park remains - partially destroyed.

Anyway we were shown a couple of floors of thee tower, which was built with a ridiculous amount of steel reinforced concrete - ie about two meters thick in parts. It's a little unclear how many aircraft this tower was responsible for shooting down overall though - records aren't clear and many aircraft initially kept flying after being hit with shrapnel, eventually coming down afterwards. They also used radar to then work out manually where to fire at the aircraft.

The society who runs the tours have been cleaning it up - it is full of rubble - and restoring parts. The last part of the tour showed us the side where you can see where half of it has collapsed, quite amazing that they are allowed to run tours to be honest as I would have thought a structure that has been blown up a few times and partially collapsed might have been more of a risk than anything.

From there it was a quick bite to eat at Alexanderplatz before walking the longest part of the original Berlin Wall - the east side gallery - which is a bit more than one kilometer in length. Parts of the artwork have been restored and others are in the process of being restored. Plenty of graffiti on parts of the wall too - especially those parts not blocked by a metal fence. Ironic really - a fence blocking a wall.

After a break it was on to the Topography of Terrors, a 'temporary exhibition' (Documentation Centre) that's pretty permanent and is located where the Reich Security Main Office and the leadership of the Secret State Police were located. Focused a lot on the SS and those individuals responsible for the Nazi persecution and terror.

We grabbed dinner at a Thai restaurant at Alexanderplatz called Inside Thai. Was some of the nicest Thai food I think I have had too, at least in some time. All washed down with a half liter of beer. After dark we grabbed some pics of the Brandenburg Gate.

The following morning was a bit of a sleep in before heading to Brandenburg Gate to start one of the free walking tours at 10am. Our guide, Steve, was very entertaining, talking about history and stories of Berlin. The tour went past the site of Hitler's bunker, Checkpoint Charlie (well, the site of and the recreation of) plus the Opera House, and some very pretty plazas.

Hitler's Bunker no longer 'exists' as such, it is now a carpark with some fairly plain looking units built over it. Hitler killed himself there using cyanide and a gun, his body was found the along with his new wife and several other senior SS people. It then ended up being located in the wasteland between the walls, and when the wall came down was rediscovered and that's when it was filled in.

That included Gendarmenmarkt - which is a square and the site of the Konzerthaus and the French and German Churches. In the centre of the square was a statue of Germany's poet Friedrich Schiller.

Also took in the former Reich Air Ministery (Luftwaffe HQ) which at the time was the largest office building in Europe. Incredibly it survived the bombing of Berlin unscathed, later serving as a Centre for the Soviet Military, and now is the taxation office. A giant mural on the side of the building shows East Germans celebrating life in the GDR. Also visited the Holocaust Memorial, also known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It is a large site covered with concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field.

After lunch, a traditional donor kebab, created in Berlin, we went through the underground information Centre for the memorial and browsed some of the stories on display.

By mid afternoon we were both pretty exhausted so grabbed an ice cream, went to a Christmas shop and bought a souvenir reindeer and walked to a new plaza before jumping a train back to the accommodation for a bit of a break.

Dinner was a giant burrito - rivals Zambrero for both size and flavour. That might we considered heading up the TV tower at Alexanderplatz for some views over the city at sunset. However, after a little googling we opted instead to go up to the viewing platform at the Park Inn Hotel in Alexanderplatz. Was only €4 instead of €13 and no queue. Tiny platform with some seating so we chilled for about an hour or so watching the light change color and the lights come on. Didn't have the 360 degree view that the TV tower would have but we managed to get a good view of the city with their most iconic building (the TV tower itself!) in it.

The next morning, and our final full day in Berlin, started with the DDR museum, an interactive museum that covers life in East Berlin during the period that the wall was up. Wages that got paid, cost of living, etc. We knew the museum was going to be busy and despite being there shortly after it opened it was. The interactivity didn't really help, needing to pull out reading displays and open cupboards to see what was behind the doors.

But we spent some time there before checking out the Berliner Don for some photos and heading back up north for another underground Berlin tour - this time of a WWII air raid shelter built into the metro station. Also grabbed lunch while waiting for the tour to start.

The shelter could hold a couple of thousand people at its peak. It was built almost opposite the flak tower we toured earlier in the week. Our Russian guide was good but overall the flak tour tower was probably a little more interesting.

One of the rooms in the air raid shelter was painted with a special kind of paint that enabled it to glow in the dark - during the air raids the shelters would often lose power and were pitch black so the paint helped people know where the entrances and exits were. We also heard about how they used candles to tell when the rooms were out of oxygen. There was a story about one of the bunkers in Alexanderplatz where several thousand people were evacuated when all of the oxygen was depleted. The shelters didn't have ventilation and were only really built for short air raids, not the lengthy ones that occurred towards the end of the war and when aircraft could fly longer.

We then walked down to the Berlin Wall Memorial. Climbed the viewing platform to see the only in situ, complete part of the wall remaining. The 'wall' was actually a wall, with a dead man zone before barbed wire and another wall. So anyone jumping the wall was usually caught or killed in the in between section, before they escaped.

We then proceeded to walk through the outdoor section of the memorial as we headed down to another station for the return home.

Dinner that night was noodles and a beer, which completes the final meal in Germany without either a stein or a German sausage!

The next morning we packed up and headed to the airport. Thought we would be super early but the airport was chaos and unorganized. The lines for the SAS check in was nuts, would have been in the queue for a good 40-50 minutes or so. Not sure why it was taking so long either.

We then joined yet another queue for boarding pass 'control' and found ourselves in what I can only describe as the budget terminal. Being nearly lunchtime we had hoped to get some food but ended up with a pretzel, muffin and a coke. Boarded a packed flight and took off a good half late.

Next entry - Sweden in Stockholm!

PS. You might think it odd that there are several photos of me with what are known as 'Buddy Bears'. I should probably explain, for those of you who have never heard of them, what this is about. It started in 2001 - and was about bringing art to the streets. So a street art project was created based around a bear. The first Buddy Bear was created by a couple of art students. There are now hundreds, if not thousands of Buddy Bears all over Berlin, each with a unique identity. On Google maps, you can even toggle their locations on and off to find them! There is also a circle of United Buddy Bears, each bear in the circle represents a country acknowledged by the UN. These bears also travel the world promoting tolerance and international understanding.

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