Berlin – 14th and 15th August 2017

Guten Tag from Deutchsland,

The big old Expat bus rolled into Berlin around 4.30pm and we checked into our funky hotel, had a quick change and jumped back on for a driving tour of the city.

Grace told us a lot of very interesting stuff about Berlin. It is only a fairly new city – around 1780 or something but it has always been controversial. Of course the most significant thing that has happened during my life was the Berlin wall. Anyway, we saw all of the sights: The Brandenburg Gate (we walked through the peasant section), a section of the wall, Museum Island, the Reichstag (parliament), The East Side Gallery, Checkpoint Charlie and the television tower. She gave us a brief history and I learnt heaps. I don’t want to go too much into that now – but basically the city was divided after the Soviet Union “liberated” the city at the end of WWII into 4 sections. Germany was told that they couldn’t be trusted to own such a major political city as they had already started two wars so the U.S.S.R. the U.S.A., France and England all controlled a section. Three parts were Democratic but the fourth – East Berlin – was of course run as a satellite Communist state by the Russkies. She took us to all of the sights, gave us the history of the wall and told us about when it came down in 1989. It has only been 28 years since Germany has been unified and what a city they have constructed in this time.

One of the highlights of the tour for me was when we saw the memorial to the “Slaughtered Jews of Europe,” commonly known as the Holocaust Memorial. The artist has placed 2311 concrete blocks in the middle of the city and refused to explain what it means. Each of these blocks are slightly different and as you walk further into this “city” the walls get higher and the sun gets further away. I felt it represented a Jewish ghetto or tombstones, but Jose showed us a picture of the Jewish graves in Mount Olive in Israel and they look very similar to these. It was a sombre place and there are rules about standing on the blocks and drinking, running etc… Heaps of kids were running through and playing in this maze and that can be excused, but when vapid princesses were taking selfies on the tops of these symbolic graves, my blood boiled a tad. Some artist online was pissed about this too and photo-shopped the tombs out and replaced them with corpses…a pretty powerful image I guess. I’m glad I got to see this controversial installation and I think it’s a very thought-provoking piece of art/history.

I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a city of such contrasts. Whatever you are into, whatever sub-culture you belong to – Berlin has it covered. It also has more green spaces than any other city on the planet, is 5 times bigger than Paris, has more bridges than Amsterdam and has a population of 3.6 million. Pretty impressive. It’s kind of like every European capital rolled into one, and then some.

Grace then took us to a traditional German restaurant for dinner – a Paulaner restaurant – just like the beer hall in Munich. I elected to not have a beer though as we had a massive day planned the next day. The food was pretty average. I had pork, dumpling and red cabbage while Jen had veg dumplings in a mushroom sauce. It was Ok but not amazing. The desert was pretty insulting – just a slice of a jam roll served with whipped cream…we then caught the metro home and crashed for hours…

The next morning saw us have a leisurely breakfast before getting the Metro to Alexanderplatz for our Segway City Tour. I was excited but Jen was a little worried about stacking it. There were 8 in our group – 4 Aussies, 4 Seppos and our guide was Irish. What a mix! Keiron taught us the basics of the Segway and how they work via sensors and if your weight is in your toes or heels. He also taught us the “bum stop” where you squat and stick out your bum to stop suddenly. Our first few laps were a bit “how’s your father” but after 2 minutes…we were pro.

We then shot straight out into Berlin traffic and spent the next 3 hours basically going over the same route that Grace had taken us on. Keiron did show us a few extra sights including the Konzerthaus, Gendarmemarkt Square, The French and German Church and finally Hitler’s Bunker – which is now a carpark. There is no commemoration or any plaques to the Nazis at all – with good reason. Every school child is taught the history of the Nazis and Hitler and how the people were slowly won over by his propaganda until they committed these atrocities. It was very interesting. The German people admit what happened, acknowledge the Holocaust, feel guilty about it, but they are committed to never letting something like this happen again. What a great philosophy!

The Segway tour was incredible and we took to it like ducks to water – man it was fun and we didn’t even have a stack!!

A quick coffee and a veg burger followed before we grabbed the Metro over to the East Side Gallery. This gallery is open-air and is 1.3 kilometres of the Berlin Wall that has now been covered in political graffiti and commissioned pieces. It was brilliant – check the pics – nothing else to say really.

After this (it was about 30 Degrees by now) we needed a bevvy so we caught the train back to Gendarmemarkt Square to an Augustiner Café. Augustiner was my all-time favourite German beer that we smashed with Cam in Munich 2 years ago. Well the next few hours were spent eating and drinking this ambrosia as the Berliners continued on in their own way outside on the street. Jen went up the tower of the French church and had a great view of the city.

After such a great few days we retired back to the hotel and crashed early as the next day was an entire drive day back to Amsterdam.

Berlin was the end of our tour and it was – as I’ve stated – one of the great cities of Europe. Keiron told us that one of the reasons that the Germans LOVE David Hasselhoff so much is that he showed the world that Berliners aren’t the sour, dour racists that they are portrayed as, but global citizens that know how to party. We didn’t actually sample the nightlife but in return trips I’m sure we could find some killer rock bars, themed bars and even old skool discos for those that like a disco!!

Auf Wiedersen Berlin – you’ve been a blast.

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