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Published: August 22nd 2012
Gourmet Food Hall 1
The food displays are wonderful. Better than an Art GalleryI have finished my glass of white German wine and beat Maryanne at Rummy (2 out of 3) and it is not even 11 pm. We are now in Berlin and this was our second day in this big city.
Maryanne suggested that I should blog in the present and go back to Krakow later, if time permits. We had a great time in Krakow, but I agree with Maryanne, Berlin is the subject.
First, we are out of Eastern Europe. As we enjoyed ourselves in Eastern Europe, we divided the price to determine Canadian $$ - and life was reasonable or cheap! Here we multiply the price by 1.3 and it is definitely more costly in Western Europe. For example - using the toilet. In Karkow cost 33 cents and in Berlin it is !.30 to 2.60 depending on the location. Fortunately, we are staying at the same hostel that Maryanne and her friend, Sydony, used and that is less that 1/2 the cheapest hotel I had originally booked.
The hostel is in a great location, is clean, comfortable beds and nice bathroom. The only complaint is no air-conditioner. However, we have two big windows and that
Gourmet Food Hall 2
Amazing selection of pre-made food has allowed a cool breeze in the evening. Since we are off of the main drag, it is fairly noisy but enjoyable!
We arrived at the hostel about 1 pm yesterday and were able to check in right away. It took about 20 minutes to unpack and then we headed out our front door directly onto Kurfürstendamm Straße which is one of the famous shopping strips. We shopped for a few hours. There were two very high end stores (similar to Harrods) and we went to the food floors in both stores. While we bought mainly water and fruit, we throughly enjoyed walking around looking the variety of food products for sale. In addition to selling food to buy and prepare at home, they had chefs to prepare food to buy and eat. There was Sushi, Italian, Wine & Dessert bars. These “bars” were located in respective sections of the store that sold the products for home preparation. It was really cool to see.
We have very limited packing space left so purchases have to be really special before we buy. We are taking a lot of pictures of things we see instead.
We limped home because
Gourmet Food Hall 3
American pop in flavours we don't get at home! our feet were sore and rested for a while before heading out for dinner. Had a nice Italian dinner across the street about 8 pm. Came back and Maryanne proceed to beat meet at Rummy, While we were playing, a thunderstorm broke and for an hour or so the rain, thunder and lightening gave us a show. It also cooled down the room and reduced the mugginess that had been pretty unpleasant all day.
Today we got up and out about 9 am. Berlin is so big that we are using public transport to help us with our roaming around. We found the closest Underground station and proceeded by train to the Business Centre of Berlin called “Potsdamer Platz”. The guide book points out some of the new office buildings and a highlight not to missed was the big Mercedes sign on top of one of the buildings. Needless to say, we didn’t spend any time looking for Mercedes and headed out for the Jewish Memorial which took about 15 minutes to get to by foot. We walked beside a wonderful, large city park and enjoyed a nature walk. Found a dead mouse!
The Jewish Memorial is made
Gourmet Food Hall 4
Maryanne buying grapes. Definitely not Safeway. of concrete slabs of various heights arranged on a city block. We walked through the blocks. It was quite moving. The Museum was closed because of a problem in the building, so we will go back later for that. Had breakfast at an outdoor cafe overlooking the memorial and were joined by a batch of house sparrows.
The other bird for the day - was probably a “Jackdaw”. We have been inundated with Pigeons in Krakow that I thought it was just another pigeon but on closer look - it was different. Took me a few minutes to get a picture and it is posted on this blog.
After breakfast we walked up the street and found The Brandenburg Gate, a beautiful town gate at one end of “Paris Platz” (Paris Square). From there we walked down Unter den Linden - a famous street with magnificent buildings and (yes, you guessed it) more shops. The only shop worthy of pictures was a car mall. Here was a mall that sold cars - high end cars of course. I took pictures for Mike!
We then turned down Friedrichstraße on our way to Check Point Charlie. We got distracted
Gourmet Food Hall 5
Maryanne holding a giant (5 Kg) of Nutella! by two things. First was the Nespresso shop. We went in to gaze at the coffees and had a free expresso. Then, across the street was “Lafayette Galerie”. This is a French store that we missed in Paris. It is another Harrods type store. It is constructed with a hole in the middle like a donut and has 6 stories. We went up to the top to look down and take pictures. We stumbled on a rack of 60% off items and found a couple of nice sweaters which we bought. We took our pictures and then found the gourmet food floor. It was impressive. Today, we decided to have lunch there and gourmet sandwiches, followed by coffee (for me) and pineapple juice for Maryanne.
The Underground station was just outside the door of the store, so we took the underground to Check Point Charlie. This was the famous checkpoint for people going between East & West Berlin. It was very moving exhibit to read through the timeline of the wall and the checkpoint. We then had a coffee/tea break at Starbucks before catching another underground heading to a place called the “East Side Gallery”.
The Gallery is
Bird
Jackdaw?? Definitely not a pigeon. the best preserved part of the Wall that is still standing. Over 100 artists have painted on the wall and it is very interesting to see it. We walked the full length of the wall which is about 1.3 km long. Next we took a City train to another district to see a portion of the wall that is still standing in its original form.
We arrived at the Nordbahnhof Station about 5 pm. This station was a “phantom” station since it was wall up and no trains could go through. It is now back in operation since the wall came down. From there we walked about a block to the original wall. It was about 5 blocks long with historical information about where the death zone was, what buildings were demolished to make way for the wall - even part of a cemetery was moved. This walk took us about an hour to walk through the display.
We then took the Underground again with a stop at Alexander Platz to see if we could find a place for dinner. This is another shopping district. We didn’t find anything that wasn’t fast food, so we headed into a
City Park
We took the route to go to the Jewish memorial beside this Park. Very peaceful. store called the Galeria Kaufhaus. This store had a wonderful gourmet food floor on the main floor. We found the various chef stations and decided to have dinner at the store. I had Thai Chicken Curry and Maryanne had Lasagna. Wow, the food was fresh, well prepared and at a reasonable price. Browsed a little until the store closed at 8 pm then took the Underground home.
We had a couple of blocks to walk from the station and there in front of us was the Mercedes sign on top of a building. I took a picture this time! Now, we did everything that the guide book pointed out for the day!
Tomorrow we are heading out to the concentration camp at Sachsehausen. There is a free English Tour tomorrow that starts from Potsdamer Platz and takes about 4 - 5 hours. Tips are appreciated, so we will pay something for the guide. There are a few museums that we want to see still and Friday is predicted to be rainy. Perfect for museum hopping.
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