Episode Twelve - 'A tale of two cities'

It's episode twelve time.

On Thursday morning we headed downstairs to sample Generator Hostel's continental breakfast before trekking through the ice and snow to get to the nearby S-bahn station - about 200 metres away. After changing trains once and about 25 minutes or so we alighted at the Berlin Zoo. We paid our entrance fee and wandered inside the walls only to be met with silence - no birds squaking, no lions growling, no hippopotamuses...making whatever sound it is that they make. After five minutes we were convinced that all the animals must have been in hibernation, except for one furry rodent that scurried between food that it's keepers had thrown into it's icy enclosure and it's burrow. Fortunately after a bit of searching we discovered that the majority of the animals were being kept inside, which made sense given that the snow was 15cm thick all over the zoo and the air temperature was about -4°. We must have stayed there for about four hours or so, alternating between the inside enclosures and the few animals who actually came from countries with similar climates to Germany, and were consequently outside. Once such animal was Knut, the young male polar bear who has become the face of the Berlin Zoo and a bit of a celebrity in his own right. He pranced back and forth across the ice, wooing the small crowd but probably more just out of boredom at being locked in an enclosure day and night. In fact, while the indoor enclosures prevented the animals suited to warmer climates from developing frostbite, it seemed to be leading them to develop mind-bite. The lions, tigers, jaguars, lemurs and other various animals wandered back and forth, back and forth, doubtless bored to tears by their comparatively tiny indoor enclosures.
We both enjoyed the day immensely, and yet we had different highlights. For Sharon it was the rock star polar bear Knut who was so wonderfully cute (although not as cute as when he was a baby) and for me it was the various varieties of primate that swung and jumped from every surface within their enclosures. Their actions and mannerisms were so human-like and it was just so adorable to see four adult chimps playing with a little baby chimp, throwing him up and down, tickling him and generally having a ball.

Tired and cold we trained it back to the hostel before heading to the huge swimming complex across the road. It's kinda like MSAC except everything is written in German of course. Now, I studied German at school for six years but they didn't tell us how to say 'change rooms', 'lockers' and all the important stuff you will need when you want to go swimming in Germany. Needless to say I spent about 15 minutes wandering around trying to find the lockers, the change rooms, which pools I was allowed to use (there is about four pools there) and the important one, how to actually get to the pools. Eventually I worked it out and got into the pool and it was only later that I realised I had put my stuff in the change rooms that were reserved for school groups. No wonder I was getting some weird looks.
After I had splashed around for a while I rejoined Sharon who had waited for me in the cafeteria. We headed back to the hostel an after a couple of cheap drinks and a game or two of pool we headed to bed.

Yesterday was probably one of the busiest and most full days that we have had on our trip, but having said that, it was an amazing day. We once again caught two trains and headed into the city centre to join a 'free' Berlin tour. I say 'free' because while it doesn't cost anything up-front, the guides make it pretty clear that they only get paid by tips and you feel pretty guilty not giving them something. On top of that, everyone that goes on the tour gets ferried into the local Aroma coffee shop (not coffee shop Amsterdam style, just to be clear) to no doubt fulfil some contractual obligation. All whinging aside, it was an amazing tour and a great way to see Berlin.
Our guide Ashleigh took us to places such as the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie and so on. Mixed in with heaps of facts and figures were great stories which helped to paint a great picture of what Berlin must have been like before, during and immediately after the collapse of the wall. The story of how the wall came down is a story of one of the biggest stuff-ups in political history, but I'll leave that for you to investigate in your own time. As we walked around the city we found it hard to imagine that just 19 years ago Berlin was a city divided, it's two halves separated by a wall made not only of concrete, but of ideology.
After the three-and-a-half-hour tour finished, Sharon and I headed back to some of the places that the tour skimmed over in order to get a better feel for the place. We wandered to the Reichstag but were put off by the long queue and we decided that the desire to go inside was outweighed by our desire not to wait in the cold for an hour. The Holocaust Memorial was a different story however. We walked straight in - despite the signs warning of long waiting times - and after a brief security check we were free to wander as we pleased. I can't describe to you how quiet it was in there - people just stood in silence and read about the horrible atrocities committed in by the Nazis, taking it all in. I'm pretty sure I saw a few people in tears.
It surprised me actually - by all accounts Germany has apparently been very reluctant to talk about WWI, WWII and the Holocaust in the past but our time here has shown the exact opposite. They are not only honest and open about what happened, but there seems to be a real push to educate people and make everyone aware of the events of the past, perhaps as a safeguard for the future.
All in all it was a long day - I think we spent about seven or eight hours on our feet and when we got back to the hostel we were both exhausted. We partook in one of the hostel's cheap dinners before retiring to bed.

We both woke this morning feeling a little under the weather, surprising given that we seemed to be the only people in the hostel that didn't go on the pub crawl the previous night. After getting ourselves motivated we had some breakfast before Sharon performed emergency surgery on my foot. It turns out that walking around a hostel bar in bare feet isn't that great an idea, as a slither of glass in my foot would testify. In my defence, I was on my way upstairs to put shoes on, realising that having no shoes was probably a bad idea, but having discovered that I didn't have the room key about half way up the eight flights of stairs to our room, I didn't feel like going down, then up, then down again, just for a game of pool. Ok, so I was lazy, but I learnt my lesson.
After Sharon had extracted the shard, we headed down to Landsberger Allee S-Bahn station and did our two-train-trick, this time for Potsdam. Potsdam is a city in it's own right, but it is connected to Berlin by the latter's metropolitan train network, which makes it rather convenient. So, after about 45 minutes on the trains we arrived at the city which was under more snow than Berlin, which, incidentally, is starting to melt due to temperatures above freezing over the last couple days. We wandered around town for a bit before heading to the Sans-Souci park which we had been told by Ton & Joka (of Rotterdam fame) was well worth a visit. Being late in the day due to my emergency operation and our reluctance to get out of bed, we were only able to spend a few hours in the park but boy oh boy, what a place. We only saw a fraction of what the amazing park had to offer but what we did see was beautiful snow-covered trees, wonderful walking tracks, churches, castles and best of all, a lake which had frozen over, allowing the locals to ice skate on it. It was an amazing afternoon and not for the first time this trip we found ourselves wishing that we had more time to spend.
We headed back into Berlin and back to the hostel for another hostel dinner. They really have got the system worked out well at Generator - good vibe, cheap drinks, cheap food, pool tables and pretty cool people too.

Anyway, that's just about all she wrote. We are in Berlin for one more day and we are considering heading to Sachenhausen, another Nazi concentration camp, which is on the northern outskirts of the German capital. While visiting Dachau was probably more than enough misery for one trip, it would be good to get a chance to read more of the information presented in the exhibition rather than being forced to stick to a strict schedule like we were on the tour of Dachau. We will see.
In a couple of day's time we are flying to Edinburgh to begin our British adventure. It should be an interesting final few weeks of what has been an amazing, yet all too short, European adventure.

Thanks so much for reading and for the continued support.

Matt & Shaz

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