Germanys Capital

Berlin

Now Berlin was cold, and I don’t mean chilly, it was frozen feet cold. But then again it was December and we were staying on a “hostel boat”…one of Charmaine’s great ideas. Quite neat really, we were sleeping beneath the waterline!

Berlin was a surprisingly cool city with a long and incredible history. Not much of the original city is intact, thanks to WWII, but the buildings that do remain have pretty cool scars. The library and main museums are riddled with bullet holes. Apparently the city had a debate as to whether they should fill in all the holes or leave them there as a reminder of what the city had been through.

We did a 4 hour walking tour of the city with a history student guide, which was really informative and interesting - although CK nearly died of hypothermia! We saw a lot of cool stuff on the tour including the learning place of Einstein, Humbolt Uni. Outside the uni there’s a memorial dedicated to the famous book burning that occurred in that square during WWII. We also visited Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust Memorial which was very moving - although apparently they decided to put anti graffiti paint on the sculptures, only to find out later that the company who makes it (and owns the patent for making it) also made the gas used in the gas chambers back in WWII!! We also visited the Jewish Museum, which was an incredible building. The building itself is designed as an ode to the Jews who died during the war. There are rooms and works of art that are there to help visitors feel a billionth of what the Jews may have felt.

We also went to Checkpoint Charlie and saw the remainder of the Berlin Wall (which our hostel boat was next to part of - there are various bits of the wall scattered throughout the city. Some are still on the original line, some have been moved into parks etc). The old line of the wall is bricked into the road and you can follow it round the city, if you really want to.

Apparently when they dismantled Hitler’s great office, there was so much marble that they could clad the entire interior of one of the underground metro stations, MohrenstraBe, we couldn’t leave without seeing that.

It was pretty amazing to think that pretty much everyone you met that wasn’t a child would have lived through the separation between East and West Berlin and it was interesting to meet people who had lived on both the East and West side. You could also see the difference in the two sides as there was a huge amount of construction going on. Since the wall came down they have been trying to equalise the economies of the two.

It was nearing Christmas and Germany is one of the countries known for their Christmas Markets. They were everywhere and full of people getting sloshed on Gluwein (Mulled Wine). So we joined in and CK decided that I also needed to try ice-skating… what a traumatic experience that was! OK, I got the hang of it eventually, but I still say having blades strapped to your feet is not natural  [CK here, of course strapping BOTH your legs to a plank and sliding as fast as you can down a snowy hill is TOTALLY natural!!]

What with all the construction going on, there is some amazing architecture around. The new mixes with what’s left of the old really well…I’ll let the photos speak for themselves although Foster’s Dome on the Reichstag and Gehrey’s DZ Bank are worth a special mention…

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