Berlin - Walking Tour

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We got up early this morning and caught the bus into town with our new American friends Dustin and Emily and met up with our group at Zoo station. The tour guide was actually an American as well, but had German parents and grew up speaking German. He is currently studying history at the Berlin Uni and has been living in the city for the past 6 years, so we were able to forgive his American accent.

The walking tour was fantastic. It went for about 4 hours all around the city and he gave us some great insights on the city's history. We saw sights like the TV Tower - where the East Berliners tried to show their technological dominance over the West, only to need to get Swedish contractors in to actually do the job! We also saw the Brandenberg Gate, CheckPoint Charlie and the largest remaining part of the Berlin Wall. We also stood in the middle of a street in an urban apartment area and were told that we were now standing above Hitler's Bunker where he killed himself over 50 years ago. Up until one week ago there was no evidence that this was the site of the Bunker as Germans tried not to have Nazi white supremacists use it as a shrine, but now there is one small sign you can find if you look hard enough.

We also went to a square where they had the 1938 book burning rally. There is a small memorial in the centre of the square which is a small window in the ground and if you look through, you can see some empty bookshelves that would be enough to hold the 20,000 books that were burned.

One fun fact we found was that when President Kennedy visited Berlin after WWII he made a speech in which he was referring to freedom which went something like this - back in the ancient world, to say that you were a Roman citizen meant that you were free - now you can say with pride I AM A BERLINER. JFK said this in German and unforunately got the translation wrong. He said: Ich Bin Ein Berliner which actually translates to something like - I am a German baked good. Tee hee... even JFK could be as ineloquent as George W.

After the tour we had a very nice lunch at a cafe and then wondered past the Brandenberg Gate down through about 2km of World Cup fever. They have about 6 huge tv screens along this distance so you can view the games and drink zie beer. The city is full of tourists and football fans and thus it has a great atmosphere - so football can be fun after all! Who knew?

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Photos

TV Tower
TV Tower which actually is half covered by a football motif at the moment.

Brandenberg Gate
This is the Brandenberg Gate which has a huge football in front of it, and behind it is the 2km stretch of football viewing.

Aussie Bear
In the square where the book burning was held, there is now a circle of Berlin Bears decorated for each country in the world cup - of course we had to find the Aussie one...