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Published: August 9th 2007
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Berlin
Wow, this place is massive!
Well, that was the first thing we thought when we arrived, but weirdly enough, all the major sights there are to see are all within walking distance of each other. With Germany having such a crazy history and neither of us knowing a huge amount of detail about it, we took a free walking tour so we wouldn't miss out on anything. We started off at one of the most famous streets in Berlin called Freidrichstrasse. The Germans were a right weird bunch back in the 1920's (if they aren't still now!) and this street was basically the equivalent of Amsterdams Red Light District, however they gave it a nifty little twist. At one end of the street you had young male boy prostitutes, put there to earn money coz there family is poor, and at the other end you'd have pregnant women prossies. The cream of the crop though back then were people that had deformities, and if you wanted a night of passion with a geezer with no limbs, it would cost you an arm and a leg! Sorry about the pun!
We made our way from there over to Museum Island
passing a building that was still standing from 1945 riddled with bullet holes and bomb damage. Most of the buildings in East Berlin, by the way, are brown and look the same, and apparently the Krauts had 17 shades of brown back then - exciting eh??? We saw the first museum opened in Berlin which is apparently the same place where Hitler gave most of his speeches, and the Germans being such a literal race decided to name their first museum "Museum". It was only when they opened a second Museum that they had to go back to the drawing board, and after much deliberation came up with the name - yep you've guessed it - "Old Museum".
We walked up Unter Den Linden (meaning under the Linden trees in English) and past a really cool memorial called Neau Wache which was designed by a German sculpture and is The Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny. It's great coz the hole in the ceiling above the sculpture means that it gets sunlight, rain and snow on it so it appears to look different every time you see it. We went
past the University that Einstein attended, and then clocked that some of the trees had numbers on them. It was then that we found out that Berlin has exactly 412,000 trees and most of them are numbered. I bet they organise their sock drawers alphabetically as well!
We took in a few more sights like the old Communist traffic lights, the Catholic Church built by Protestants opposite the Protestant Church built by Catholics, and hundreds of buddy bears (Germany's National symbol) lining the streets, before getting to the Soviet/US checkpoint. Checkpoint Charlie is more commonly known as Disneyland because nothing you see there is real. There is an old bunker there which is not real. There was a sign saying "you are now entering the American sector" - not real. The real one is above it in the museum. There is a soldier you can have your photo taken with - not real. He is actually a stripper earning some extra spondoolees during the day. There's a picture of a Soviet soldier - not real. He has 4 medals on - each one meaning a different rank such as Major, Lieutenant, General, and Colonel. There's a picture of a
US soldier there - not real. He has a medal on which he could only have picked up during the Gulf war. I could go on but you get the point and at least it's similar to how it would've looked those years ago.
The German government have kindly laid stones into the road/pavement to show you where the Berlin wall used to be. It was crazy to think that if we had stood on the wrong side of this line 17 and a half years ago we would have been shot. There is still some of the original wall still standing, and it is pretty unimpressive at first glance as it's only about 10 feet tall and a few inches thick. My grandma could've climbed over it! We then found out that this is only the outer wall and before it would have been another two large walls, copius amounts of barbed wire, electric fences, beds of nails, anti-tank bollards, tripwires, landmines and guard towers. Despite all this some people still escaped over it and it took the Germans four attempts at improving the wall before they finally got it right. Funnily enough, because it's now a criminal
offence to chip off parts of the wall, there's a metal fence protecting you from getting anywhere near it - how ironic is that!
With our tour getting more progressively Nazi, we went past the old Luftwaffe Air Force headquarters (which, when the Brits carpet bombed the whole street destroying everything else we managed to miss somehow!) and headed to the site of Hitlers bunker. Now the car park for a block of appartments, it doesn't exactly look how you'd imagine. It's quite difficult to avoid the urge to pee all over the tree where the crazy son of a bitch blew the back of his head off.
The Jewish memorial around the corner is pretty cool, and not what you'd expect either. It had an air of irony though, because the anti-graffiti coating used to protect it contains the same chemical that was used to gas the Jews during the 2nd World War! Only the old classic sights of the Reichstag (their parliament building) and Brandenburg Gate (the gateway to the city) were left to see, however just in time before the rain kicked in, we managed to see the 7800 Euro per night hotel balcony that
Wacko Jacko dangled his baby Blankets over. Fruit cake! We also found a place that served beer in one litre Steins - probably not good for the Aussies reading this coz you guys drink out of girlie sized glasses, but I know the Brits among us will love the idea. Bet that'll spark a few comments!
We absolutely loved Berlin, and would have liked a few more days to check out more sights like the concentration camps etc. but the beaches of Croatia are calling us. It's a hard life.
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