Berlin

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Today is my last day in Berlin before heading to Cologne by train. Berlin is an amazing city, you spend a year there and not see everything. As it was I went to a couple of the museums, like the Pergamon which has a fully reconstructed Greek altar and a reconstruction of the Ishtar gates (from the city of Babylon). I also went to a rather impressive Einstein exhibit celebrating the ´chief engineer of the universe´ during the 2005 Year of Physics

I did a lot of the sights related to Berlin´s recent history - exhibits on the Nazi regime, the new Holocaust memorial right in the middle of the city, exhibits on the Cold War and the Berlin Wall.

Despite all the history, much of it not very pleasant, Berlin is incredible in that it is such a forward looking city. The entire place is one massive construction sight - the tour guide of the cycling tour I went on mentionned that 80% of the cranes in Europe are in Berlin. The city seems to be one of constant change, constantly renewing itself but they are very aware of their own history. For example, we were one of the last people that will see the Palace of the Republic, a hideous building that housed the GDR Parliament, which will be torn down to rebuild the facade of the royal palace that stood on the site until the Communists dismantled after WWII.

I went to some of the main sights, like the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. I was really surprised to see the Quebec flag right beside Berliin´s most famous landmark.

The nightlife in Berlin is pretty wild. The city seems to go to sleep in the evening, but is full of activity again starting around midnight. And the bars have no closing time... Alcohol is fairly cheap here, as you can get a beer in a bar for around 4$(CDN), but the serving size is a good bit larger than in Canada. A difference between Canada and Germany is that it is no problem to walk around with open bottles of beer anywhere (even on the public transportation, which, by the way, is much better than back home) or anytime (I´ve seen people drinking beer on the streets as early as 9h).

The food is also pretty good, with sausages (wurst) being a local favourite. Currywurst is really good: its basically sausage drowned in a ketchup/curry sauce. The beer is very good. The non-alcoholic drinks are different too: there are lots of fruit (apple and orange, especially)based drinks, many of them carbonated. Some are better than others.

For those wondering, I´m staying in a district of East Berlin. East and West are definately different, with the Eastern part of the city still looking a bit run down. Incidentally, one of the icons of unified Berlin is the East´s Ampelmann. These are the characters on the walk/don´t walk signs. They are kind of cartoony, and subject to a save the ampelmann campaign shortly after unification.

Later is my train to Cologne, which will take about 5 hours or so. I´m already thinking of when I can come back to Berlin.

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