Berlin

This was an extremely long drive and once we arrived in Berlin it was pretty hectic to drive in due to all the construction. It was a 314 km drive, mostly uneventful but we have two lights “blinking” on the dash now and are unsure of what they could mean. Our free camp area was located on the northern part of Berlin in the Tegel area. It was in the parking lot of an outdoor store and they really had an impressive amount of goodies. It’s a good thing we were broke. The following morning after we explored the camping store we made our way into Berlin via the subway and managed to find the free tour done by New Europe. The group was so large that they split 4 groups off based on language and then split up the Eglish group in 2 until there were about 20 of us left per group. Too bad I didn’t speak French as it was a small group of 2 people. My guess is that they usually have more English speaking people as there were 2 other guides that tagged along with our guide Nick. Like the Munich tour, it brought us along many important sites and gave a great history on everything. We started with the Brandenburg Tor, Berlin’s most famous gate. On top of the gate is a woman riding a chariot (she represents victory), apparently when Napoleon came through these gates he liked the statue so much that he brought it back to France. When Napoleon was defeated it was returned back to Berlin and now it faces in the opposite direction facing the French Embassy, it was altered a bit and the market was renamed after Paris. In a way, it’s kind of like running salt into an open wound for France. There was also an extremely famous and expensive hotel in this plaza, and sounded pretty boring until the guide mentioned that it was the very hotel that Michael Jackson dangled his baby out of. We then made our way over to the memorial to the murdered Jews. It was pretty odd, but you couldn’t help but be moved walking through it. After that we stood over the site where Hitler’s bunker was, the bunker he killed himself in and got married in. No bunker is there now and no signs saying it ever was. We then walked past a huge Nazi built building that is now being used for government things and is supposed to be in an upcoming Tom Cruise movie. Apparently it was pretty eerie seeing the Nazi flags on the flag poles when they were shooting the film. The next stop was a section of the Berlin wall. Julie was expecting something remarkable, but it was a pretty simple yet very effective. It was here that we heard some interesting stories of escape attempts, failures etc. The best was about two guys going across the death strip in a cow costume and succeeding. Check Point Charlie was next on our list of stops, and was rather “touristy”. The history of what happened here is more interesting than the area itself. We then had lunch at a famous American restaurant that we can’t remember the name of at the moment. We then saw chocolate houses and monuments in a very expensive chocolatier. After this, we made our way to Babelplatz where the first Nazi book burning took place, we also saw the monument of empty bookshelves for the book burning. In the square there was also a very odd giant garbage bag hanging over the edge of a building containing manikins, computer stuff, CD’s etc. We weren’t too sure what it was supposed to symbolize. We then went to Alexanderplatz where we got to see two identical churches, one for French speaking and the other for German speaking people. It was then off to Museum Island, where the famous TV tower stood in the back ground. The tour was extremely informative, fun and all in around 5 hours. Julie and I wandered around a bit more on the island (wouldn’t know it was one though) and made our way over to the TV tower. On the way we saw an impressive fountain for Poseidon, Julie reminded me that all of his fountains to date have been impressive. The only things left for us to see were some museums on the island, the government building and the Teirgarten Park. We decided to skip the park due to the cold weather and it being a park. We made our way to the government building just on the other side of the Brandenburg Tor to have our free tour. The building is fairly interesting, as the roof is a dome ceiling made of glass. The line up was long and we ended up talking to a few people in line. A young lady named Lesil from Colorado tagged along with us during our walk through the building. It was pretty cool, apparently the artist designed it so that whenever the politicians want to know who is in charge they just have to look up and see the people, it also allows a clear view of the proceedings for the people above. The view at the top was great. After we finished the tour Lisel asked if she could join us to the museum we decided on and off we went. All the museums are free on Thursday nights after 6pm, so we chose the one that had the Gates of Babylon (one of the wonders of the world). The museum isn’t quite what Julie and I had envisioned but was still worth seeing. We did run out of time near the end and had to cut the tour short. Both of us think that a guided tour would have been better than the audio guides as they didn’t cover everything in the museum. We said our goodbyes to Lisel and made our way back to the van. Tomorrow it’s off to Leipzig.