Berlin – day 3

Since we got a lot out of our Paris hop-on, hop-off bus tour, we thought we’d do the same again in Berlin. Being that Berlin is such an enormous metropolis, you can’t exactly just walk around it and hope to see everything.

We started at Brandenburger Tor, the huge pillars that form a gateway which was used as a ceremonial marching path for returning war heros. At the top sits Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory along with her horses and spoils of her latest triumph. It’s quite the impressive structure and from what we’ve seen at various souvenir places, it’s also very much a symbol of Berlin.

From there we drove past Parliament house and the old glass dome built on top, then onto Hauptbahnhof (central station) which is an enormous structure with trains going in and out in 3 sides of the building with the 4th being the front entrance. It’s also multi-level so it’s not too big a building and comes complete with a huge variety of shops including a supermarket. Very clever design.

Afterwards, it was a fair bit of seeing more of the city, various bits of interesting trivia and so-on. We got off at a few places, one in particular was Potsdamer Platz – an enormous area of skyscrapers all built since the wall came down (so since about 1990 or thereabouts). The amount they’ve achieved in 20 years is staggering. It’s also where we saw remnants of the Berlin Wall. The Government have put in a reminder that stretches the entire length of where the wall used to be with special pavers outlining where the wall once stood and at various parts, they’ve put up small sections of the actual wall. Pretty interesting to see and touch.

There happened to be a mini-carnival put on by the Austrian Government complete with makeshift ski-run and various food/drink stalls. Was pretty cool.

From there, the other interesting bit was Checkpoint Charlie – the well known transfer point between West & East Berlin. There’s massive storyboards complete with photos and descriptions of the key events in chronological order, including the big stand-off between the East German tanks and the US tanks that lasted 16hours. I didn’t realise that Coalition Forces (US, Great Britain and France) didn’t finally leave Germany until 1994! That’s only 16 years ago… Amazing to think how far the country has come in such a short time.

Last night we didn’t do a whole heap, but it turned out to be quite good fun. We went looking for a laundromat, but couldn’t find one, but it did lead us on a walking tour of the area we’re staying in. Some absolutely enormous homes and there’s a beautiful lake just nearby. Might go in the daytime today and check it out more.

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