Blogs from Berlin, Berlin, Germany, Europe - page 17

Hello Berlin, it took us about 5 hours to get there form Amsterdam. It was a very good trip and it had an open food section pleasing all of the crew!... read more

Where do I start to blog about Berlin, a city so central to the history and perhaps the future of Europe? This would be my second visit to the capital of Germany and Jeanette's first. My first was a brief business trip with no spare time. We were in Germany a few years ago but not anywhere near Berlin so we decided to take a guided walking tour of the city which lasted nearly five hours. Our guide, of English and Indian heritage, lives here and has a clear passion for history having got her degree in ancient history. She basically covered 800 years of German history starting with the establishment of Prussia. Many important figures dominated the history but Frederick the Great probably influenced this country more than any other and even to this day, ... read more

Friday 5 June: Unbeknownst to us, the UEFA Champions League Final is being held at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on Saturday night between powerhouse clubs Juventus and Barcelona. Surprisingly this is the first time they have met in the final. So when we got to the Brandenburg Gate today we discovered the area had been cordoned off into a special zone for celebrations etc. You can still walk through but views of the gate have been severely impeded. No matter anyway as when I turned the camera on the battery was flat – I must have forgotten to turn it off after downloading photos yesterday. So we had a slight change of plan in that we went our separate ways straight away and we’ll do the sights we were going to do together tomorrow or Sunday. Heather ... read more

Thursday 4 June: All breakfasted, showered, packed and ready to go about 9 so we headed into the city. After storing our luggage at the Hauptbahnhof (after Zachary had fallen over and grazed his knee quite badly because he was being silly rather than walking properly) we took a tram to the Altstadt area. Zachary and Heather went to the Transport Museum while I had another walk around the city. The Transport Museum was excellent. It had a variety of cars, bikes, planes and trains on display. Yesterday we bought Zachary a little Trabant car – and we saw one in service as a private sightseeing tour as well. The Trabant is (in)famous as the massed produced car of the old DDR. They were fuel-inefficient pollution machines! I remember seeing quite a few still in Berlin ... read more

Berlin is a new and vibrant city that has a very turbulent history. It amazed me at how the capital of the Third Reich faces that very ugly past. I tried and take in as much information about that history during my time there and I was amazed at how well the information is presented. On my day of arrival, I simply checked into my hostel and then went for a little walk. On my walk around, I saw the towering TV tower, the Berlin Cathedral and the Neve Wache. The Neve Wache is also called the Memorial for Victims of War and Dictatorship and houses the remains of one Unknown Soldier and one unknown victim from a concentration camp. The soldier has soil from a battlefield around him and the concentration camp victim has soil ... read more

The only real hiccup I had with transportation in London happened the morning I left for my quick flight to Berlin. I was heading to a different airport - the discount airport, basically, haha - and the line I needed was unfortunately under a great deal of construction. As such, I had to walk to a new station and ask for directions quite a few times to get information on the re-routing I would need to do. FORTUNATELY, I'm absolutely obsessive about leaving myself with plenty of time, and this was no issue at all. I got to the airport with plenty of time - too much, in fact, as the Gatwick Airport doesn't even give you gates until about 40 minutes before your flight leaves. Still, it was an interesting experience, and made me very ... read more