Being Berlin

Berlin Central

Stop One: Berlin!

I had limited time in this destination so I went for breadth rather than depth in terms of stuff I did. This post will be a something of a chronology for two days exploring. Please note that around all this stuff I was also engaging in copious amounts of people watching and window shopping. Mainly the latter.

I decided to catch the train from Copenhagen to Berlin, which took me 7 hours. I took the train because I wanted to see the countryside rather than the inside of an airport. The most surprising part of the journey was that we went on a ferry between Denmark and Germany. I couldn’t understand why we were told to get off the train but I followed everyone anyway, and despite it taking me a while, it finally clicked that we were motoring over the Baltic. I saw lots of cute country villages and a couple of big cities, including one with lots of Churches in its skyline. There are also heaps of wind turbines again, but on a much grander scale than Denmark. I also noticed heaps of houses with roofs covered in solar panels. Government subsidies perhaps?

One weird thing was that despite me booking a train that went direct to Berlin Central, I had to get off at Berlin Spandau (which is on the outskirts of Berlin) and use the local S-train to go the rest of the way.  No matter, it was pretty easy to get to where I needed to go.

Holocaust Memorial

Berlin itself is really cool. Very busy, lots of people and with a really interesting mix of old and new buildings. The public transport network is really well run with trains, busses, trams, and subway all working in with each other.

I stayed in a hostel called EastSeven in Prenzlauer Berg which is in East Berlin and just on the edge of the main CBD area called Mitte. The hostel was fantastic. Friendly staff, clean, and safe. They cooked vegetarian dinner (free) two of the nights I was there, and offered a really cheap breakfast of toast and cereal if you wanted it. They also had a selection of beers available for 2Euro. I also found this really amazing café down the street and around the corner that had the best scrambled eggs I have ever had.

Some of the obvious touristy things I did included the Holocaust memorial and museum underneath it. It was pretty appalling what happened back then, but the memorial itself was so amazing. It is a square of about 200 stelae (upright concrete blocks) of varying heights, standing on an undulating ground so that the light kept changing as you walked through. The blocks were tallest in the centre. At least, I think so…

Brandenburg Gate

I also saw the Brandenburg Gate (with Star Wars characters posing for photos in front: so bizarre), Berlin Wall, and Eastside Memorial. This last one is the longest stretch of wall left and is covered in really amazing artwork. I followed the hoards of tourists to Checkpoint Charlie (the Yankee gateway to Soviet East Germany) and couldn’t help but appreciate the irony of there being a McD’s right beside it. Fun fact with the McD’s, and something I have noticed in The Netherlands, is self-service kiosks. I tried using one somewhere (can’t remember where) and found them a bit hard to use. They are best for ordering your basic combos rather than a custom order

Got lost but eventually found Ku-Damm, the billion-euro street, so named as that is how much is spent along here each year, and visited the most amazing department store Kaufhaus de Westin (KaDeWe). It was amazing to see watches and diamond earrings selling for E50,000.

Finally, I wandered through Kreuzberg, a big up-and-coming area that is undergoing a lot of redevelopment.

 

Less touristy things included finding a Mercedes showroom (Heaven On Earth for me, such a delight of modern engineering. One day a Mercedes and I will be together, one day...), a Mini showroom where I discovered that you can actually customize them a bit to suit your individual style, and a Bugatti Showroom where I locked eyes on the Bugatti Veyron: a 1000hp beast that sets the hearts racing of hot-blooded males the world over.

I also found Deutsch Bank’s Bank of the Future: a bank branch with a (non bank-related) general merchandise shop, educational centre (also not related to the bank and money) and restaurant/bar (where anyone can come for lunch etc) combined with the usual bank functions. The opening hours were also much longer, 10am to 8pm. Apparently this is the Deutsch Bank’s vision of what a future bank should look like. Seemed like a good concept to me!

I finish off this ridiculously long post with a couple more photos for your enjoyment.

Original Berlin Wall fragment

Subway Station