Fabulously lazy days in Berlin

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After three delicious days in Berlin, we are on the move again. Currently on board Zug 241, from Berlin to Krakow, we are heading to Zagan in Poland to visit the Museum of Allied Prisoners of War Martyrdom, Stalag Luft III where my (Hero’s) grandfather was a POW during the last part of WWII. We are happy to be on the train again, as both Keira and I have fallen in love with train travel and particularly on a day like today which is cold and rainy and miserable, it feels wonderful to be comfy in our carriage watching the rain beating down on our window as we peer out to the beautiful and green and grey landscape outside.

Berlin was fantastic and although we are happy to be back on a train (after the Trans-Siberian I think we feel more at home on trains than in hostels!), I think that we will definitely be going back there at our earliest opportunity. We took it pretty easy in Berlin, which felt wonderful… spending our days mainly eating raspberries from the street side greengrocer across the road from our wicked hostel (“The Circus”), drinking great coffee from the various cafes across the Mitte district and sampling a lot of delicious food as well as doing a spot of shopping (mostly window though thanks to our 20 euro a day combined budget - excluding accommodation) and taking advantage of the free wifi at our hostel to organise the next few parts of our trip (hiking in the Tatras, our Greece trip and organising a few things for Austria and Czech). All in all we had a very lazy time, with the exception of yesterday when we actually ventured further outside the confines of our beautiful little neighbourhood to do a walking tour of Berlin.

Our guide on the tour, Barnaby, was great and very amusing, taking us on a surprisingly comprehensive tour of some of the very important historical sites including the “Disneyland” Checkpoint Charlie (nicknamed so because it is just a reconstruction made to look like the original complete with actors in soldiers’ uniforms and the famous sign that says “You are leaving the American quarter” or something), the site of Hitler’s bunker (not that there’s really anything left), the Brandenburg Gate, part of the remaining Berlin Wall, the home of the WWII German Luftwaffe (which miraculously managed to escape all the WWII bombing raids, much to the frustration of the Allied bomber command), the Reichstag and Frank Gehry’s latest architectural creation inside the DZ Bank known as the “Berlin Whale” which was incredibly beautiful and abstract and stunning (see photos below).

After the tour, we headed over to the East Side Gallery, basically an open air street art gallery on part of the longest section of the remaining Wall, which runs down beside River Spree. There are murals on both sides of the Wall, on the street side it is more historical and political graffiti from between 1989 and about 2000 (from what we gathered), and on the river side there is more contemporary street art, but on both sides there are layers of graffiti where people have added their art, comments, stories and thoughts to the wall to create a fascinating and visually stimulating monument to freedom and art. I really enjoyed it. We stopped at a bar half way down the gallery and enjoyed a beer by the river which was also very nice. With every intention of hitting a few clubs last night, we headed home (back to our hostel)… but thanks to a couple more beers and a ‘quick’ email check and snuggle on the couch, these intentions quickly faded  we felt a bit slack, but the lure of sleep was too strong and we had to have an early start this morning, so the clubs will have to wait until next visit. I’m sure they will still be there ;-)

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Photos

The Circus Hostel
A fantastic hostel if you are ever in Berlin...

Memorial
Controversial memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazis

Walking Through Memorial
Controversial memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazis

The Brandenburg Gate
To prove we really did do some sightseeing!

East Side Gallery
"The World's Too Small for Walls"