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Thursday 17 April 2008 Our Easyjet landed in Berlin, but our arrival wasn't so easy. We spent nearly an hour in the airport trying to track down Barbara's mobile phone that she accidentally dropped our departure gate at Paris airport. We discovered the local philosophy of 'don't care'. Unsuccessful in our hunt, we caught the train to the city and tried to find our way to Michael's Phd supervisor Tim's office. After walking out of the station we were very confused. Luckily Tim expected this and came to meet us. He walked us to his apartment and introduced us to his basement. This wasn't just any basement though, it was almost the size of our two bedroom house in Sydney! Very comfortable.
After Michael and Tim spent some time catching up, we headed out for a delicious - and only slightly boozy - dinner at a Russian restaurant at Kollwitzplatz. Mmmmmmm....Dumplings!
Friday 18 April 2008 In the morning we joined yet another New Europe free walking tour. We met at the Brandenburg Gates then visited the Holocaust Memorial which was very moving, the site of Hitler's bunker which is now a public parking lot next to which
people bring their dogs to go to the toilet, the 17 June Memorial, and a remaining section of the wall. There wasn't much left of the wall as most of it had been cut off and sold to tourists which was sad.
We continued on to Checkpoint Charlie which has been disgracefully commercialised. We stopped for lunch and sampled some Currywurst - sausages with sauce and curry powder - surprisingly delicious! We were very entertained at the end of the tour when we leaned how the wall eventually came down - a drunken official made the wrong announcement and everyone followed his orders.
Dinner with Tim and colleague Nidthida was very enjoyable. We dined at a great Indian restaurant along the Eberswalderstrasse restaurant strip - Sangeet Indisches. Oh how we had missed Indian cuisine!
Saturday 19 April 2008 We spent most of Saturday on a very boring tour of the nearby town of Potsdam. The town itself is lovely, as are the parks, palaces, etc. But its not much of a tour - its more the kind of place you take a picnic to for the afternoon. The highlight of the day was the annual tulip
festival celebrations that we found by chance in the town. They weren't even art of the tour but we asked the guide if we could spend the lunch break there. We had a ball!
After some more palaces and parks we checked out the local markets before heading back to the city.
Sunday 20 April 2008 South of the city centre we followed the path of the Wall to the East Side Gallery. The gallery comprises a 1.3km long section of the Wall which remains standing and have been decorated by artists with murals promoting peace. Unfortunately, much like everything else in Berlin, the Wall and the murals have been covered in graffiti. Such a shame.
Slightly jaded, we headed to the Pergamon Museum created to house the Altar of Pergamon from Turkey. However the most popular exhibit - and our favourite - was the Gate of Babylon.
After wandering through some more local markets we headed back to Tim's to prepare for our next journey. He kindly helped us find the best route to the bus station which is quite far from East Berlin. We got to the bus station in plenty of time
The site of Hitler's bunker...
people now park their cars and empty their dogs hereso we sat amongst the smokers to wait for our bus to Brussels.
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