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Published: June 10th 2006
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Micky in a trench!
This is in Berlin, at one of the many many very sad war memorials. Guten tag my friends! Actually after just writing that I've experienced a blank on whether or not that really is the word for hello in German....oh well, lets just say it is!
Okay, before I tell you about Berlin, I have to send out a huge sincere apology to the country of Belarus, as we completely missed it out of our blog, even though we stopped there for a night. So anyway, better tell you a bit about it, since nobody has ever heard of it, including us til we got there.
Belarus used to be part of Russia, I think it was only in the 90's that it became recognised as a seperate country. Its currently run by a president who is said to be 'europes last dictator' not on the scale of hitler of course, but nonetheless, his apparently not the nicest fellow.
Absolutely beautiful country, so neat, so orderly, the complete opposite to Russia, with no crime too. However, this is apparently because its still being run in a communist style, which doesnt allow the poor belarussians much freedom. Anyway, like I said, we were only there for one night, we did a city tour, but thats about
another sad memorial in Belarus
This one is a man depicted holding his dead son. He went out chopping wood one day, and came back to find the entire village had been rounded up by nazis, put in a barn and set alight, they all died. This was in the 1940's it, so apart from a few photos for you, there's not a lot to report back.......so.....on to Berlin!!!!
Now, besides the city being covered in soccer balls (blow up balls appeared on top of every phone box, street sign, etc, there was even a 25mt high soccer ball proudly displayed in front of the Brandenberg gates....pretty sure I saw micky drooling) it was an awesome city, contrastingly (is that a word?) modern with an ancient history...if that makes sense!
And.....(you're so gonna be jealous at this bit) we even got to purchase our own little piece of the Berlin wall.....cool huh, a little bit of concrete for the mantle piece...woohoo!!! :-)
There's quite a bit of the Berlin wall still standing, I guess for 'touristy' reasons, unfortunately its not the best graffiti I've ever seen thats covering it, but its still kinda cool. Much smaller than you'd think though. We were taken on a walking tour of the city and saw the 'death strip' which is the part you had to try and get through if you wanted to get to the other side, but if you got to the death strip you were shot immediately by soviet guards. And...for
and another
This memorial shows the names of all the villages that were wiped out by nazis in the same way. Some of the villages had populations of around 50,000. you history buffs out there, for your info, the last person shot trying to climb over the berlin wall was only in 1989, a 21 year old who thought the guards might not be as 'trigger happy' as they used to be, so he'd try his luck....he didnt make it, but if he had have waited just 9 more months, he could have walked across, as the wall was then pulled down.
Its only took 2 weeks to build the 155kms of the berlin wall (think it was put up in 1961), seperating west berlin from east germany, and it didnt matter if you had family members on the other side of the wall, you werent allowed to cross it ever.....pretty hard to comprehend hey! Anyway, out of all the countries we've visited so far, Germany would have to be the most 'progressed' city after the communist regime collapsed, they're doing extremely well for themselves (not dwelling on it like the poles...no offence poland...loved your country)
We enjoyed touring the city on our own this time (no need to hide under the bed), everybody spoke english, the signs were in english, the toilets were great (still had to pay for
Me and the Berlin Wall
To state the obvious...this is me posing in front of whats left of the Berlin wall...cool huh! the toilets...damn european toilets...we definately take our free loos for granted). We watched a couple of scam artists doing the old 'ball under the matchbox trick' you know the one, they move the matchboxes around and around, til you supposedly dont know which one the little ball is hiding under? we watched that for a while, and thought we were pretty good cos, standing behind him, we could pretty much see where the ball was at all times, cos he'd half lift up the boxes. Anyway, we were pointing to which one we thought it was under, purely for our sake (having competitions between ourselves) when the guy running the show turned around and said, you're correct, now give me fifty euros and I'll double your money. We thought it was pretty dodgy but everyone was yelling out 'do it, do it, you've just doubled your money.' It was all legit, (apart from the whole illegal side of things) we could have swapped our 50 euro for 100, had we had a damn 50 on us........darn being tight arse backpackers. The people yelling wouldnt let up til we emptied our wallets in front of them to display our pitiful coins,
The giant soccer Ball
Nevermind the infamous Brandenberg Gate.....check out that big ball!! and prove that we really were.....well.....shit outta luck!!
Ah well, you win some, you lose some.
Well since Berlin, we've actually sat on a bus for 4 hrs, a ferry for 2hrs, two danish cabs, an aircraft for a couple of hours, a train for 15 minutes, the tube for half and hour, and a short ride in a black cab......so now we're in london!!!
We're off to Leeds tomorrow (for those of you playing at home, its somewhere in between london, scotland and ireland) as we've decided that's where we're going to live for the next 6 mths or so. It wasnt a decision made lightly trust me, nope a great deal of thought went into this, we sat down, pulled out a map of england, mick closed his eyes, span around 3 times then pointed to the map. He landed on Leeds, so Leeds it shall be!!!
And, we've even managed to since line up an inspection of a couple of units tomorrow, how's that for organisation hey! We'll let you know if the flat is the size of a toilet or not...should be fun!
Whoa, definately talked way too much cr*p this time, so
Where the wall once stood!
Here I'm pointing to where the berlin wall once stood, right beside the brandenberg gates. Its apparently a must do for tourists, you must stand on the bricks and take a pic! here's some photos...til next time!
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jade
non-member comment
hey tanya
hey tanya does that class as a standard drink