Berlin on the Spree

Tuesday 6th April 2010
Early plane to Berlin! We arrived at about 8:30am and settled in to the cafe to wait for Daniel and Gareth (flatmates from London) who were arriving about an hour after us. Once they arrived we headed for the Couchsurfers house, dumped our bags and headed out. First stop was Alexander platz for German beer and German sausage, yum!

Daniel pointed out this would be Nicks album cover if he was a folk singer :)

Next we went on a walking tour, it was so awesome! We saw museum island, berlin wall, checkpoint charlie, hitlers bunker, Jewish memorial, brandenburg gate, etc..., and lots more. Our tour guide had like a masters in modern history so she was very knowledgeable! The tour went for four hours, so needless to say we were desperate for more food and sitting.
Daniel and the small car...
Sight of hitlers book burning, i think this guy wanted to climb in,
Jewish Memorial
Berlin Wall, Nick
Gareth and some building I can't remember...

We went back to Alexanderplatz for one of those brilliant German-Turkish kebabs and after chilling for a while we joined the massive que to go up the TV tower. We arrived at the most perfect time, dusk, we saw the sun set over Berlin from the top.
On the underground station... at the end of a long day on Bargain Hunt,

TV Tower...

Wednesday 7th April 2010
Today Nick and I headed off to see the Jewish museum, (the boys wanted to go to see the Olympic stadium from hitlers Olympics). The Jewish museum was really cool (designed by Daniel Liberskind), there were three axis (holocaust, exile- or something like that- and culture) and the exhibits were made along this axis, as well as the exhibits there were these 'voids' that Liberskind had designed into the building- one at the end of the holocaust axis was just a dead end, you walk in and the void stretches up above you and around you.


The other one you could walk into was another large void going up several stories but on the ground were all these iron faces about the size of your fist and as you walk over them the sound of them clinking together fills up the whole void.
Jewish museum stuff
Nick touching the void.
Exterior of the museum.
After the museum Nick and I went to Potsdamer Platz, to check out some buildings there, then back over near the Jewish memorial to have some lunch. Then we went exploring the Tiergarten (Berlins Central Park). On the map there was a building that looked like it was designed by Santiago Calatrava so we took bets and went to find it (and find out who designed it). I won! The Berlin House of Culture (previously some kind of world cogress) was actually designed by some modernist from the U.S. Next we headed over to where we were going to meet the guys and went in search of a cool restaurant for dinner. We found one, walked to Alex Platz to meet boys, told them of our discovery and caught train back to restaurant (which was very authentic). At the 'authentic'/ restaurant
Afterwards we went to Irish Pub in Hackescher Markt so Gareth could watch the football (not so authentic).

Thursday 8th April 2010
We had to leave the couchsurfers today so we moved to hostel in Charlottenburg. We all went to bottom lefthand corner of Tiergarten (where the zoo is) with the idea to walk to the Reichstag in the top righthand corner. We stopped halfway to go for a row around a little lake we found in the garden, then got lost and ended up in the bottom right hand corner of the garden....



these wanderings (and boat trip) took a few hours! eventually we found our way to the Reichstag and joined the massive cue. An hour later we were at the top looking over all of Berlin (again- but closer than the TV tower).
note the english boy in shorts while the aussie wears a coat....

The view from halfway up the dome.

Afterwards Nick and I were half dead and we raced the boys back to the hostel (we differed on which way would be quicker) Nick and I won by about 2 minutes. The boys then went to Charlottenburg Schloss which- quote- 'looks like Buckingham Palace' so we didn't miss much, and then they went to check out the river (and a piece of the wall still standing there) for a while. Nick and I had some delicious Asian food (Tom Kha Goong) and went to bed....