On Thursday we caught a train to
Berlin where we were to stay with Ash & Nick for 4 nights. Funnily enough Georgia was also there
for a few nights too staying with some friends of her dads! Ash & Nick live in a flat in
Koppenplatz near Hackescher Markt, which turned out to be a great place to base
ourselves for a few days of Berlin adventures. After a late start we met up with Georgia on Friday for some
sightseeing (Ash & Nick opted out as they have seen it all a million
times!). We managed to fit a
number of sites into the afternoon, including the TV Tower (368m high) at
Alexanderplatz which gave us great 360 degree views of Berlin as we ate cake
and drank German beer in the revolving restaurant, Brandenberg Gate, Reichstag
(Parliament, but we didn’t climb up the glass dome because the queue was too
long) and nearby Tiergarten, the Holocaust Memorial (really interesting but
very sombre), the site of Hitler’s bunker, Checkpoint Charlie, and finally
Potsdamer Platz and the Sony Centre.
After a tough day of sightseeing it was time for a beer, so we met Ash
& Nick at Berliner Prater, a well known beer garden, and tasted some
excellent wheat beer, pilsner and dark beer.
On Saturday Abe, Georgia & I
started off at Gedenkstatte Berliner Mauer, where you can climb up a tower and
see the Berlin Wall and a reconstructed no-mans land. It seemed very fitting that at that point in time the
weather turned sour and it started raining heavily, which added to the sombre
mood of the place. Afterwards we
met up with Ash & Nick and spent the afternoon wandering around Museums
Island and Unter den Linden, seeing some spectacular old buildings, and the
book burning memorial at Bebelplatz.
The afternoon ended with a Russian-style tea at Tadschikische Teestube,
where we were served tea with various things to sweeten our tea (brown and
white sugar, and jam of all things!), things to nibble on (tiny dried lime and
orange cubes, raisins soaked in rum, sweets, and biscuits). Needless to say we were all pretty stuffed
by the end of it!
On Sunday Georgia few off to
London, and the rest of us started the day with a Berlin tradition, Sunday
brunch! It turned out to be a
buffet of cereal, yoghurt, wurst (sausages!), eggs, salad, cold meats and cheese,
fruit and cake. Again we were
stuffed, and around midday we headed for the Soviet Memorial, which was HUGE
and quite impressive! In the
evening Berlin was host to Fete de la Musik, where numerous places around the
central city have music stages set up, and musicians play everything from dance
music and hip hop to jazz and funk to rock and pop. We headed for one place around the corner and drank beer
while listening to a dj playing chilled out trance, and a band, before continuing on to 2 other local bars.
We had
a great time in Berlin, thanks to Ash & Nick’s extensive knowledge of the
city! It really is an awesome
place, with a great mix of old and new… the arts and music scenes are alive and
kicking, bars and clubs are open late, the beer is cheap and really good, and
you can’t go further than a couple of hundred metres without tripping over a
place selling Wurst – what more could one ask for??
