Berlin, Germany - History, Culture & Beer, lots of Beer
Yeah, I know, we’ve just bought an over 100 year old house in a small village in the centre of Portugal, and a few weeks into renovating, we’ve decided it’s time to go to Australia, as we do. And of course, if you’ve been following us, you know we just can’t go straight from point A to point B, so, yes, of course we make a little detour to Berlin, which’s been on our list for some time now. So, after a ride to the train station, a 1.5 hour train ride to Porto, Portugal and another train ride to the airport, we catch a 3.5 hour Ryanair flight to Berlin, then train to central station and walk to our hostel. We arrive at night, so, we check in at the A&O Berlin Hauptbahnhoff, great value for money and perfect location. Walking distance to almost everywhere, highly recommended for it’s price range. Then we go out for a pizza and beer, the pizza was all right but the “local” beer is just amazing, seriously.
Next morning we make our way to the very informative Sandman Free Walking Tour. Berlin is a city with so much history that for 3 hours, the tour guide has just talked about WW2 and the Cold War. We go from the remnants of the Berlin Wall, to Hitler’s Bunker, to Checkpoint Charlie, the most infamous checkpoint between the East and the West, to some history on the rise and fall of Socialism, to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, to the Topography of Terror, a very comprehensive exhibition about the rise of Nazi Fascism in Germany. We also learn a lot about the city, it’s history and culture and it’s people, we then go out for a kebab and visit a couple of the museums on our own, at the end of the day, as we walk back to the amazing Brandenburg Gate, where the tour started we see a sea of people, mostly women in pink shirts. We make our way there as there are a few bars and we feel like a beer. We have a few with bratwurst sausage and mustard and find out the event is a women’s run. We shared a table with a few of them and have a good chat, very friendly women, what a great day, I fall in love with this city immediately but it takes an extra day for Paul to follow suit.
On day two, we catch the metro to visit the East Side Gallery. The gallery is a heritage listed open air gallery presenting an array of urban art painted on the remaining parts of the Berlin Wall. Really worth the trip. We then walk to Museum Island. Museum Island is the name of an island in the Spree River which is home to several museums and the National Art Gallery, you can buy a combined ticket and visit all of them, which is pretty much what we did. https://wikitravel.org/en/Berlin/Mitte#Museums_and_Galleries We take a short break and have yet another local sausage and then on to the next museum. What an amazing day, what a feast for the eyes and the soul. Highly recommended. We walk back to our hotel as we have to pack but along the way, we visit some other sites and go back to others, such as the Brandenburg Gate, what a great city Berlin is. Tomorrow morning, off to Australia.
