Berlin Day 1

So I have arrived in Berlin late in the evening. This is the first time I've tried to find a hostel in the dark and I had to take a long bus ride to the other side of downtown Berlin to find it. However, no problems and I went to bed. A room with 16 people and two quiet snorers. The room was almost empty until 4am.

The next morning was an adventure in public transit. Only 1/3 of the S-Baun trains were running as there was a catastrophic failure of the brake testing and 2/3's of the trains were immediately removed from service. So it's hard enough to follow alternative transit setups, let alone when it is in German (article). Anyway, I eventually made it downtown just in time to catch the 'free Berlin' tour. It was really good and very informative and lasted 3.5 hours. All my walking for the past 1.5 months has paid off as the rest of my group was dragging along by the third hour.

We started at the Brandenburg gate.

And close by was the memorial to murdered jews in Europe. It was quite large and consisted of all kinds of blocks. You descended through the paths and the blocks would tower above you.


Hitler's bunker had no memorial. Close to where the Berlin wall ran, you can see the condo's that were given to the 'best' of East Berliners. They were close to the wall as they were less likely to try and escape. Hitler's bunker and where the bodies were burned is where the parking lot now stands.

Here is a part of the Berlin wall.

And this sign was at checkpoint Charlie - the main gate for foreigners to leave and enter East Berlin.

The position of the former Berlin wall was marked throughout the city as a line of bricks.

In the museum island there was a great statue of a winged horse and I just liked the photo.

In East Berlin they erected the TV tower. Apparently they wanted the skyline to not be dominated by crosses but you can see the light reflection makes a cross on the TV tower. Apparently they tried different ways to eliminate the effect but without success.

Then in Berlin I went to one of the famous museums devoted to antiquities. In this museum they had the Ishtar gate of Babylon. I think this is the first example of cuneiform writing that I've seen.

The gate in the museum was massive. In fact, there were several large structures that were recreated in the museum.

After the museum I went out for dinner with a man I met using the couchsurfers website. We went for dinner in a trendy area of Berlin. It turns out he had a PhD in microbiology and gave me several contacts of people to check out in Germany. I also decided that since I was in Germany, I had to make at least one attempt at drinking beer. This was almost the same thing, half beer and half sprite and actually rather decent with the meal.