Berlin- I am a Jelly Donut

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Ratings explained:
'Bad times' - self explanatory
'Don't bother' - self explanatory
1* - worth a look
2* - Good Times
3* - Unmissable
+ - emphasis on the rating

JFK in Berlin June 26, 1963 stated "Ich bin ein Berliner" which if heard by a German outside of Berlin and out of context could imply the president was declaring himself a Jelly Donut.... thankfully the people of Berlin understood the context and didn't call their Jelly Donuts 'Berliners' (as some other areas of Germany did) and responded warmly to JFK.
Isn't Berlin a fine place!?

Berlin was scheduled in our trip as a quick layover on our way to France, we'd been to Berlin previously, spent a week there, and loved it dearly. Berlin is in our top five favourite cities in the world.
We've never been so glad to be there as we were getting out of Moscow we almost wept for joy when we got to our pleasant first floor hostel room and relaxed on our beds in mild 25C weather. Thank goodness we escaped the 36C+ Moscow heatwave at last!

We were camped out in a decent hostel in Berlin near Alexanderplatz. To celebrate we went out for a nice dinner 10 yards from our hostel. It was moderate to expensive but a nice night out. Nick drank a 'Berliner Kindl' beer which true to it's name had a small child pictured on the logo; how weird to have a 'Kids beer' we thought!
We retired at a reasonable hour in comfortable beds with the windows open and finally slept a comfortable and restful sleep.

Our next day in Berlin we slept in a bit to recover then our hostel offered free breakfast which we eagerly partook.
We decided to spend some time discovering the Berlin Wall on this visit and made a note of 'Checkpoint Charlie' and a 'Berlin Wall Documentation Centre Museum'. We decided to first head to the latter museum which was walkable from our hostel and free, it was a good decision.
Berlin Wall Documentation Centre Museum (2*) had some interesting interactive information on computers including photos and video. One in particular conveyed the escape of a GDR (East German) border guard to the West, he did this by leaving his post and hurdling over the barbed wire to freedom! It was an excellent story with matching photo.
We read a lot of information including about how the GDR government had tried to justify the building of the wall to the people through propaganda and why they'd had to build the wall (emigration was so huge 1/6 of population had left for the West). It was interesting and a sad state of affairs for the people of the GDR. We saw a preserved section of the Berlin Wall and some other portions of the wall and memorials; it was a good historical place, with sad stories of 'the wall'. Great price at 'free' too!
Later, seeing the price and content Checkpoint Charlie Museum was offering we laughed happily and declined to go since we figured we'd just seen and learned 90% of what CC was offering for free instead of for 20+ Euros. A 'No brainer'.

Still suffering our 'Moscow hangover' we headed home for a rest and nap then headed out to do washing. Doing a good 7-10 days worth of washing for two people in one hit is no picnic and usually takes 2-3 horus of out of your night... bad times.
We retired early and tired to our hostel with clean clothes where we ate in their bar; Nick enjoyed a Schnitzel (ahh Germany) and Alicia found an 'Aussie Works Burger'! (for those not in the know it's a famous style of Australian burger with beetroot, egg, and pineapple on amongst other usual burger ingredients).

Just a quick segue on eating (as per a subscriber request) I'll quickly explain what our eating consists of thus far in our trip. Most breakfasts have been wheat bix or special K type cereal we make ourselves in plastic bowls and spoons we carry around; just needing to buy a little milk each morning to make this happen.
Most lunches tend to be a fresh roll or baguette from a bakery that we eat with Nutella or Jam we carry around for the purpose; it's cheap and nasty but fills you up. Some days we can't bear eating rolls anymore so we have a kebab for Nick and Panini or Pizza slice for Alicia.
During the day we snack on bananas, the odd apple, occasional carrots, and tomato/ cucumber for Alicia. Nick also indulges in nuts and yoghurt covered nuts/ raisins when he can. We also eat plenty of sweets (mainly Nick actually), and at the end of a hard days travel will eat loads of crisps, pretzels, chocolate, and Alicia eats yoghurts too. In Berlin we spent over 20 euros on sweets and chocolate in one go (!) when Alicia found her favourite chocolates in the world 'Neuhaus', and Nick found a huge pick & mix sweets place ! Oops!
Unlike our last Europe 3 month trip we aren't drinking alcohol every night; but Nick is still trying every beer he either hasn't seen before or fancies so we probably drink more often than not on an average week. Nick was on a quest for his favourite Pilsner beer in Germany but it seems to have gone out of production which made him sad.
For dinner we usually find somewhere that strikes a balance between 'nice and price' or Alicia cooks if we are in a self-catering place (of course it won't taste as good as when Nick cooks but someone has to write the diary and blog! Hahaha).
We don't want to be too lavish in our meal spending early in our trip as we need to not run out of cash over the full six months.
That's about it for food and drink.... reasonably healthy for the first 6 weeks.

Our Final day in Berlin was to be an exciting one; our first time apart since the beginning of our trip!Yes after 42 days and over 1,000 hours constantly together we were having a day off from one another. Healthy to get out of one anothers pockets for a day so we can stop snapping and shouting at one another!

Alicia decided to go shopping and pillow-fighting or whatever it is women do whilst Nick shouldered his camera gear for a mammoth day of walking the streets and photographing anything and everything memorable. Sorry to 'Alicia fans' but since I'm the one who's typing you can only hear about Nick's day in detail....
Berlin is a city big on graffiti and street art (graffiti that's not ugly). As I walked about I saw plenty of both, I've posted photos of some of the best stuff. My walk took me all over town, and through the Tiergarten the vast park grounds in Berlins city centre. Heading from Tiergarten to the Brandenburg Gate Nick discovered a fair sized memorial to the Soviets of WWII which included a large bronze soldier and arched monument, a couple of mounted T34 tanks (allegedly the first two to get to Berlin) and some interesting info in English about the fact the soviets had a lot of memorials, monuments, and graves in Berlin and that the German government was responsible for maintaining them and upkeeping them, also during the cold war how access to these memorial sites became a sticky political issue.

After lunch I stumbled upon the excellent 'Topography of Terror' museum (2*+ (just to be clear on the rating I'm not saying this place was 'good times' but it's 2* equivalent as a very compelling, sobering attraction). The museum gave a very good look at the SS & Gestapo under the Nazis and really helped to reinforce and remind one what monsters they were.

My main highlights included an intriguing photo of the SS guards of Auchwitz partying together and letting their hair down on their downtime .
SS Guard rant begins here: The photo you see shows some prison guards a mile or two from Auchwitz; one of the most notorious extermination camps in Nazi history over 1.1 million people were put to death there. These guards were presiding over one of the greatest systematic massacres of innocent civilians in all history yet the photo shows them jovial, letting their hair down, and having a good time (note some or all of the women may not have been guards but just came by to help entertain, I don't recall specifics). The photo momentarily left me speechless but now I'm ready to share some thoughts to explain the shot:
1.The guards were either such inhumane monsters that the endless killing of innocents they didn't bother them.
2.That the guards were so brainwashed with the propaganda telling them their victims were sub-human they didn't feel the empathy one should feel for the suffering of other people.
3.That unlike many Germans these ones were part of the problem; the bullying, evil, murderous types that help make the Nazis the benchmark for bad guys to this day.
I can appreciate even the scum of the earth need to let their hair down and cheer up a bit and the photo is just a snapshot in time, but to me the guards look TOO happy in this photo to have their conscience eating them and their souls dieing inside; and surely if they were deeply upset or traumatised they wouldn't be laughing it up so happily?!
I hope this photo gives some of the readers some of the shock, dismay, disgust, and intrigue it gave me; it's one of the most compelling historical photos I've ever seen.

Other highlights of the museum included:
A memorable letter from a Dutch resistance leader calling for people to stop looking the other way and stand up for their fellow citizens.
A fascinating order from Himmler saying any gays found in the Nazi SS should serve a tough sentence then “be shot whilst trying to escape” how proscriptive!
There was also awful info about how the leaders of the jews in the ghetto had had to choose who lived and died to fill the Nazi death 'quota' imposed. One leader had to tell his people he'd had to agree to give the Nazis “all children under 10, but the over tens were still ok!”..... the leaders dilemma was if they refused they'd be shot then the people would be picked anyway.
Insult to injury in the ghetto we read about they all got killed in the end either way! Bad, awful times.
The museum really helped stress how the Nazis had bullied and terrorised the German people into submission, also it intriguingly conveyed one viewpoint that said the Germans were willing to forgive some Nazi excesses and extremes against the Jews due to the good times they were bringing generally to Germany e.g. improved economy, employment, and pride, and didn't see their outrageous treatment of some population subsets as a major issue.
Despite us having a day off the museum was too good to miss so I texted Alicia to come and check it out which she duly did later once I'd moved on to other wanderings; we both would strongly recommend it.

My afternoon involved a lengthy walk through the Kreuzeberg district which was busy, gritty, and had lots of street art and 'real' charm to it. Pretty buildings too. I saw some of the best street art here with all the walls around an apartment complex covered in very nice, modern, colourful art. East central Berlin really does seem to have the most interesting streets to walk. It looks like a great place for more exploration and probably for lunch/ dinner and drinks.

After a good long day apart we met up for a traditional German style dinner of Pork knuckle for Nick and Schnitzel for Alicia, which we both enjoyed then set off for our airport hotel and a fond farewell to brilliant Berlin. We always feel happy and comfortable in Berlin and it was a shame to only be in town a few days.

Flying out of Berlin Nick applied a combo-lock to his main bag to check it on to the plane, to our dismay we found the lock jammed and so I was now off to France with a 'locked shut' bag! Bloody combo locks; it's the third we've had break this year!
In a first stop in France in Nice airport the service office was able to rally a handyman with 3 foot long bolt cutters who arrived and promptly clipped off my bag lock like it was melted butter. Good times! We've now thrown away all our combo locks and will switch to key locks for our next flight.

This entry brings you to France, next entry to cover some of the fabulous times we've been having here.

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Photos

Lovely Berlin
I'm ever so fond of Berlin; this is a random place about the city that I liked the look of.

More pretty Berlin
Walk any city streets enough and you're bound to find pretty buildings.

Pieces of the Berlin Wall
Chunks of the Berlin wall are setup in this park near the Berlin wall documentation museum.

Pretty street scene
Nice green street art and a bike. I like

Cool street art
I loved the scale and shape of this enormous work of street art on this building

Lovely Steet Art
This apartment block was covered in brilliant colourful art like this. Nice isn't it!

SS guards partying at Auchwitz
This photo in the museum momentarily left me speechless; but not for long, read my lengthy rant in the blog.
It's the guards from Auchwitz partying and having a good time