Blogs from Berlin, Germany, Europe - page 166

Hey folks! Had a comparatively late start today - so far our usual slobby ways have been left in Harrogate - but we still managed to get into the centre before midday though. We ended up having ham and salami baguettes for brekky again..we're practically Germans now! Had a wander past the gold statue which acts as the centre of the lurve parade. We were pleasantly surprised to discover a huge fair-shindig thingy going down by the Reichstag and Brandenburg gate, with groovy 60s (Doo wah diddy was a personal fave!- sam) cover band. As today is the 15th anniversary of the reunification of Berlin, we did our bit by having some Bratwurst. Then we went to the new Jewish memorial by Brandenburg gate- we wer'e a little unsure of what it was at first as ... read more

Hey guys! Thanks for all the comments, keep 'em coming! Spent all of yesterday in a small place outside of Hamburg called Lübeck. Was really cool, Sam got to wear her flip-flops for the first time outdoors (exciting stuff indeed: Dan). Awesome pictures but no one seems to have discovered USB ports so we still cant post them. We really recommend Lübeck, very pretty and easy to find your way around and everyone seemed really friendly. However Dan now has two diseased elbows, and its no coincidence that the day after he showed them to me (sam) i started with an itchy hand! Im all for sharing but there has to be a line you know?! Anyway...Now in Berlin after a stupidly rammed train, in which we spent most of the time sat near the toilet-was ... read more

As most of you probably know, Anton Bruckner is my absolute favorite musician of all time. Although he was Austrian and studied and taught in Vienna, today, he is quite widely known and listened too in Germany as well. When I saw that my program had arranged for us to attend the concert Brucker’s 8th Symphony, I was beside myself with joy! The concert was at the Philharmonie Concert Hall (although the orchestra was not the Berlin Philharmonik, but instead the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, which is nevertheless quite good), which is definiteyl one of the more unusual buildings in Berlin. It was built in the 70s and is a very angular, non-symmetric building. In fact, there are no lines of symmetry anywhere in the building. However, the concert hall itself for all of its strange ... read more

Sometimes when travelling, I love to just pack myself a lunch pack up a few things, and head out the door without any specific destination or goal. I just wander around and see what I see and soak up the world around me. I feel like one can spend so much time looking at things in Berlin that one is not able to step back and actually see Berlin itself! So, to fight this tendency, I decided to set off for an adventure today. It was a wonderfully sunny and nice day and I figured it would be perfect for hanging around. I decided to start off the day at the newly built new-old center of Berlin: Potsdammer Platz. Earlier, this square was one of the busiest intersections in Europe and has the location of the ... read more

Berlin, like many European cities, is actually an amalgamation of what was previously several smaller municipalities. The original Berlin is now only a small section of the current city, which merged with another old, nearby town named Cöln to form Berlin. Over the years other nearby municipalities were added to the city. Today, there are 12 of these Boroughs, which actually are condensed from what were originally 23! Mostly near the center of the city, they have merged together and are little more than neighbourhoods today. However, some of the towns near the periphery maintain a fairly strong separate identity. One of these boroughs is Spandau, which is actually one of the oldest parts of Berlin, dating back as far as the 7th or 8th century (while Berlin itself dates back perhaps only to the 12th ... read more