Took Eurolines bus at 9:30 PM to arrive in Berlin by 7:30 AM Saturday with Sharon. We ate chocolate, chatted, slept on the bus ride there. We stayed at the Grand Hostel Berlin which is ranked #3 Hostel in all of Europe for 2012…IT was the cheapest hostel I’ve ever stayed at (15 euro/night) and THE BEST hostel! We arrived a bit early before we could check in, so we explored the area around the hostel and got pastries. I AM IN LOVE with Berlin’s public transportation system. Germany boasts about its public transport with good reason! Everything is laid out in an easy way, everything just makes sense. Although, there are two metro systems: B and S because they are two different companies.
Sharon and I made our way to the Brandenburg Gate for our 3.5 hour tour of Berlin. Oh yea, I fought Darth Vader in front of the gate. He made sure that I knew he ‘wasn’t my father’…lol. Sharon and I got Haagen-Dazs icecream. When in Germany..right? The tour, covering 800 years of Berlin’s history, we re-learned major points including the Cold War, WWI, WWII, Berlin Wall, and contemporary history. Brandenburg Gate is the only remaining gate through which Berlin was once entered. After Prussia’s defeat, Napoleon took the Quadriga (the top sculpture of the chariot) to Paris. However, Napoleon was then defeated 8 years later and the Quadriga was restored to Berlin. Not so coincidentally, the Quadriga faces the French Embassy within the city centre, which may or may not be a message to the French not to mess with Germany again. Also in the city centre of Berlin, Pariser Platz, is the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his son Blanket out the window…lol.
We saw the Reichstag which was used by Hitler to kill of democracy after a suspicious burning in 1933. We moved from the gate to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe: about 2,700 concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern, where the heights of the slabs vary, as does the level of the brick floors beneath you, creating uneven slopes. Walking through it, it is thought that you may feel a sense of being enclosed or losing touch with the world. Oddly, it was built by an architect from NJ.
We then visited a parking lot nearby the memorial. As we stood above it, the tour guide told us how we were standing over Adolf Hitler’s bunker where he committed suicide. It was turned into a parking lot so that Neo-Nazis or Hitler-followers alike would not be able to worship or treat the area as sort of holy grounds. It also ensured that the area would never be able to be dug up. Also learned that Hitler’s body was dug up, cremated, and his ashes scattered across the Biederitz River, again so that no one could visit a particular location to worship/pay tribute him. We visited the Luftwaffe Headquarters, having typical Nazi architecture: intimidating-ly large and stoic. Despite its huge size, it survived the bombing with little damage. Outside of the building, the Nazis displayed socialist mural/propaganda. Later on after the defeat of the Nazis, a large-blown-up photograph of protestors (of the same size as the socialist mural) to depict the real unhappiness of the people was placed into the ground. Ironically, the Luftwaffe HQ is now the home of the New Ministry of Finance.
From there, we walked to the Berlin Wall. The top of the wall was covered in tubing to prevent people climbing over from East to West . The tubing proved more effective than barbed wire, since the tubing gives you nothing to hold onto. We followed the line of the former Berlin Wall, through the former Nazi Government District to Checkpoint Charlie. The large picture is an American Soldier who is forever looking into East Berlin, the Russian Sector. On the opposite side of the picture is a Russian Soldier who is ever looking into West Berlin at the American Sector. As a symbol of the Cold War, Checkpoint Charlie represents the separation of the east and west.
We took a 30 minute break, got food AND I FOUND BUBBLETEA!!! Surprisingly, Berlin had Boba Tea shops all over! ahhhhhhhhhhh ahahaha I got so excited! Sharon tried it, thought it was kind of weird (as expected) but liked the milk-tea part! Also all over Berlin were frozen yogurt shops and bratwurst shops.
At the Gendarmen-markt in Berlin, we saw the German andFrench twin Cathedrals and das Konzerthaus built by Berlin’s premier architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. It really is a beautiful square. Onto what was once called the Opera Square, we saw the 2x bombed Staatsoper, St. Hedwig’s Cathedral, Catholic cathedral built in Protestant berlin by Frederick the Great (as a sign of tolerance), the Humboldt University where over 2 dozen Nobel prize winners studied (Brothers Grimm and Einstein taught here, Marx and Engels worked here), and the area where the books burning took place.
Over to the Neue Wache, the Royal Guard House by Schinkel, we saw the sculpture by a Berlin artist depicting a mother holding her dead son in her arms. The artist herself lost her own son in WWI and her husband and grandson during WWII. Dedicated as the main German Memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny, the name was given so as to not stir up controversy. Therefore it is a memorial to the Germans who died senselessly in the wars but also to the victims of Germans…buried underneath as the unknown remains of a German soldier lying beside a victim of a concentration camp along with soil from different battlefields and camps of WWII.
At Alexanderplatz, the TV tower is East Berlin’s most iconic structure. It is the city’s tallest structure and was built in 1969 to show Berlin’s advancement in technology. On Museum Island (which is literally an island), are the 5 main museums including the Altes Museum by Schinke (housing Ancient Greek and Roman statues and pottery), Old National Gallery, the Pergamon Museum (has the Pergamon Altar, the Ishtar Gates or Gates of Babylon and an entire two story Ancient Greek temple), and the Berliner Dom which was built to look old but was really just built early 1900s. In the crypt of the Dom, the old royal family is buried. Thus, ended our great tour. Sharon and I walked around Alexanderplatz for a bit, then headed to the East Side Gallery. Ampelmannchen or ‘little traffic light man’ is a symbol for the GDR (German Democratic Republic) of East Germany, as only East Germany had this traffic light man with a hat and West Germany had the generic human figure. Sharon made it a quest to take picture with every Berlin bear she could find.
Along the East Side gallery, over 100 paintings by artists all over world depict 1.3 km memorials of freedom. The open air gallery is the largest in the world and pretty awesome. After admiring the wall, we decided to rest at our hostel before our bar tour.
Sharon and I did the bar tour with our hostel, went with the hostel host, 2 girls coincidentally from Australia, a German, a French, and British. We started the night with German beer, Jagemeister. We then went to the first underground Berlin bar which was dimly lit and played almost trance music. We tried a traditional German drinking tradition where you add “Ahoj Brause” to your shot of vodka and it fizzes. Comes in different flavors, tasted kind of strange but it was good. Next place we went to was another underground bar, we literally sat on the carpet floor of the back of the bar, around an “art instillation” which looked like a piece of pipe to me. Around the corner was another art instillation of two videos of cats. It was a strange night to say the least, but hilarious especially when Sharon started blaming the English guy on our tour for dividing Ireland. This fun-argument lasted all night, I couldn’t stop laughing lol . We picked up a 60 cent beer and took the train to another part of Berlin. We first went into an underground Berlin club, lots of smoke everywhere, pretty gross. We also went into a gay bar, which had red-carpeted walls, lots of lights, and was ABSOLUTELY PACKED. It must have been the only touristy club we went to. Our last stop for the night was at another Berlin club which played solely electronic music. Again, it was soooo packed, you could barely move. We made our way home.
