Blogs from Germany, Europe - page 668

I arrived in Berlin at 10am on Wednesday. I went to the hostel, dropped my bags and walked straight to the Brandenburg gate. I had lunch and then went on a "free tour" (it's tip based) of Berlin. The tour lasted four and a half hours and I really enjoyed it. The guide was really good and he told us some German history and showed us around former communist East Berlin. I really like Berlin, it has some weird energy. It's so steeped in history. I instantly had the feeling that my four days here will not be nearly enough. We saw the gate, the holocaust memorial in the centre of town, the site of the bunker where Hitler committed suicide, a remaining section of the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie and the main sites in central ... read more

Had a bit of a rough start yesterday...was packing before work and could not find my one and only check card. Turns out Tuesday night got a little too crazy and I left it at the bar. Despite all the minor panic, I flew out of Cedar Rapids on time to Chicago to D.C. to Brussels, Belgium, to Berlin! Now I am awaiting check-in time at 2 pm (have been waiting for about 4 hours now). I got lost in transit from the airport to my hostel. I tried extremely hard to speak decent Deutsch, but the minute an English word pops out, suddenly no one can communicate with me. Besides the nice bus driver. The first driver was not so friendly and i got off at the wrong stop for the U-Bahn (train). All in ... read more

Wednesday morning we will be in Frankfurt...we have to remember to ring the family and then get on the train to Stuttgart.... read more

"Berlin ist arm, aber sexy."........"Berlin is poor, but sexy." spoken by Berlins' mayor in 2004 Many cities are recognisable by their grand old buildings. London has Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Edinburgh has Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile, Beijing has Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City, Prague by Wenceslas Square and Charles Bridge. Berlin is unlike these other cities in that much of what is recognisable about it was built in living memory. The dust is still settling around Berlin after momentous, traumatic change - you can still see pieces of the Berlin Wall and where it once stood and sealed up bullet holes in buildings. Walking around Berlin, you can identify whether you are in the old east or west Berlin by the traffic lights at pedestrian crossings. The pedestrian traffic lights ... read more

First entry here in Dortmund, Germany! We've travelled around 1000 miles on the road already and are well into the swing of things. Driving on the right has been pretty easy for us all to adjust to, though navigating on a map with only the largest roads in Europe on has proven tricky! After cramming all our junk in the car, our first stop on day 1 was in Paris via the Dover-Calais ferry connection. Arriving around 7.30pm, we had time only to plan the next day's activities. We were delayed entering Paris due to strikes but spent the morning in a lovely little cafe in the suburb we were camped in. Our whistle-stop tour of Paris included the Arc de Triomph, the Champ D'elysees (no idea on the spelling!), some of the famous streets in ... read more