Thursday 5 June - Saturday 7 June 2014
Left Brugge at 8am, changed trains at Brussels and onto Koln where we boarded another high speed train, heading for Berlin. This part of the journey l was particularly looking forward to as this was a part of Germany l had not seen before. However, l wasn't to see too much. Our seats were situated in between two windows and all l could see was metal. There was a sliver by of glass adjacent to the seat in front of me that gave me a very narrow of the countryside.
Nevertheless, we arrived in Berlin in the late afternoon / early evening and set about exploring the city.
Much like Koln, the city is very modern due to the fact that the city was basically rebuilt after WWII. As was the case with Koln, the churches largely remained standing as did a number of the older and historically significant structures.
The Brandenburg Gate and the Siegessaule (Victory Column) were two impressive monuments, as was the Berlin Dom and the museums close by.
The Siegessaule is situated roughly in the middle of a park named Tiergarten. It is a spectacular park with areas of forest scattered through it, along with the normal grassy areas. It is apparently around 500 acres (200 hectares) so it's a big park!
The German people seem to acknowledge the atrocities of WWII, however the actions are attributed to the Nazis rather than the German people, which is fair enough because many Germans were persecuted by the Nazis. Consequently, there are memorials to the Jewish people as well as the people we would describe as gypsies, who were also rounded up and gassed in concentration camps. The memorials are sobering places that pull no punches when illustrating what the Nazis did.
We walked a section of the Berlin Wall which was not pulled down and was given over to artists to use as a giant "canvas". All of the work is what l would describe as modern street art although the professional artists amongst us probably have a different description. Sadly, much of the art has been defaced by graffiti which has demeaned the work of the original artists. The theme of the work has been around the fall of the wall and what that meant to Berliners.
From there we walked and trained it to Checkpoint Charlie. Whilst the guardhouse is a replica, one of the street corners nearby, which was once a part of the no-mans-land associated with the wall, has a very informative and sad display about the wall. Sad because it names the people who died trying to cross to West Berlin.
The photos showed a substantial no-mans-land on both sides of the wall, although in some places it seems that buildings effectively formed part of the wall. The East Germans bricked the windows up to prevent people jumping from them into West Berlin. We observed that the no-mans-land has now been filled in by new buildings.
Which brings me to the subject of building cranes. The skyline is littered with them, particularly in the old East Berlin section. The economy certainly appears very active, although there were a lot of street beggars and gypsies trying to con you out of your money.
Berlin would have to be the most 'Americanised' city l have come across - the USA has had a big influence on the culture here, both in food and fashion. The most common retail outlets seem to be Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King and KFC. As a consequence, we didn't see any eateries offering traditional German food, although I'm sure they are around. We eventually did try a currywurst, and although pleasant enough, it is not something we would eat regularly. Having said that, the ones we sampled may have been poor examples as l understand that they are popular in much of Germany.
We enjoyed Berlin but it has limited old buildings and as a tourist it is hard to get excited about 30 year old buildings.
If you were a young man, there are plenty of quite attractive young women to get excited about though. Whilst they do not dress as elegantly as Parisians, there are quite a lot of blue eyed blondes around.
Next stop Prague.
