Deutschland or bust (Berlin)

M Well to sum up Poland before we get to Germany, the second day we spent walking around Krakow. We saw the castle, Christmas market, looked for a phone to call my aunt.. with little luck. Then in the evening we went out with 2 polish and 1 spanish guys from our hostel. We just went to a couple pubs, later they took us to a famous sausage place. We had a great time hanging out with them. The one guy Cuba worked at the hostel and got 5 hrs of sleep as he worked the morning shift.

The next day, onto Germany. Although Krakow is not far from Germany the only trains that are not night trains go through Warsaw which is the oposite direction. So it was a 9 hour train ride and we sat with 3 Americans on the way to Warsaw, and 2 Polish people and an Italian guy who would not stop talking on our way to Berlin, so no sleep for us.

We arrived in Berlin late in the evening. Their subway/train system is VERY complex compared to Prague and Budapests, it took us like the whole week to figure it out. But we were lucky that 2 people saw us and gave us their day tickets that they were done with. Something Jes had done in Prague, what goes around eh?

We were staying at the GENERATOR (yes you must say it like Arnold Schwarzenegger) with 902 beds. We were very nervous as it was far from our first choice, but many places were full. We were plesently surprised. Yes it is huge, but good breakfast, good atmosphere, and very comfy beds. The first night we met a guy from Spain, and a guy from Israel. We stayed up all night talking with them. It was neat learning about life in Israel first hand.

J Our first surprise in Berlin was how much the subway/metro line cost for a day pass, we ended up getting a tourist pass that cost an extra few €s and gave us unlimited use for three days and discounts at attractions. The first day we had planned an outing to a few meseums as Thursday is free entry into state run museums after 2pm. We wrote a few emails, hung around the hostel, and left just after 1pm for the mesuem of modern art.

We arrived at the first mesuem right after 2 and proceeded to walk in and get stopped at the entrance. Apparently, we had forgot that Thursday was spent on a train, it was Friday! The staff had a hard time communicating the fact that it was free yesterday, so he just started telling us "Friday" which at first I understood to mean the free entry was tomorrow, but later, after seeing that we were upsetting him, realized that indeed it was Friday. So in the end we stayed and paid for a three day meseum pass (as we had 5 days in Berlin).

The modern art museum was very interesting. There were many different exhibits, we made fun of some, fell asleep at some, and enjoyed the rest. Michelle was shocked at the amount of nudity, and I was shocked at the amount of arcade games! Yes, an entire exhibit devoted to these ancient quarter eating machines, we spent almost an hour playing all the free games we wanted, it was so great. Michelle had to drag me out kicking and screaming. (In fact just earlier today we were having a discussion related to Mrs. Packman) lol

We also enjoyed an exhibit by Roman Singer, who blew things up, shot things, threw things in the river, and lit off explosives in his hands. They were mostly videos with a few pictures. I took a few videos of his videos, so Ill share those once we get home. The Mordern Art Museum was a very nice change from the regular art galleries we had been seeing up to this point.

Afterwards we got lost in the great Haupbanhof (main train station), which had trains on the bottom level, the top level, and probably on a few other levels, it was bigger then Edmontons airport, honestly. Once we finally got out of there we headed back to our hostel and met up with Fernando, the guy we had met the day before in our dorm. We had a few drinks in the bar and played pool.

The next day we joined a free walking tour, it was excellent. We saw the Berlin wall, stood where Hitler's bunker was located, walked through the Holocost Memorial (which was the size of a city block, seee picture), Humboldt University (site of book burning), and stopped outside the Berliner dome. Oh and we also froze our butts off, the obvious disadvantage of taking walking tours at this time of year. Once the tour was over we headed straight for another mesuem (free bathrooms, heated, what more could you want?). It was a cool Egyptian Museum, the highlight was of course Queen Nephritis bust (which was a statue of her head basically, not her cleavage).

After warming ourselves sufficiently, we went across to the Christmas market (are you seeing a trend yet?) and had some German susages for dinner.

There was a huge outdoor faire going on around us, it had about as many big rides as Capital Ex, however it was in space of about half that and thus was very cramped and we got out as soon as we could. We then went to the Reichstag, which is like the parliament building, and had this big glass dome on top that had a great view of 1. The city at night and 2. The parliment hard at work below.. thus if the people who are elected to run the country ever forgot who they're working for, they simply have to look up and see the people. Very cool design.

Speaking of design, the architecture in Berlin is amazing, after all, 90% of the place was demolished during WWII so they have replaced or repaired most of it. It is very modern. Oh and did we forget to mention the big T.V. tower? It's nothing special, basically it was the communist government showing they had just as much technology and ability to build big towers as those dirty capitalists.

M What Jes forgot to mention about the TV tower, is that it was build after the Communist government took down all the crosses from churches, and when the sun hit the large golden cross that sits on top of the Berliner Dome (no idea why it was allowed to keep its cross) a big golden reflection shone onto the round T.V. tower and everyone in Berlin could see the cross.

The government was not happy about this, so they told the people that it was not a cross, but a plus sign, a plus for Communisum as they said. Others dubbed it "the Pope's revenge". lol

The next day we started at one of the Berlin Wall documentation site, it also had the church of reconcilation, which we didn´t enter as it had services going on throughout the day. It had more information about life during the existance of the wall, and was situated where the wall stood seperating the French side of West Berlin and the East.

From there we had lunch and headed off to our final museum which was on museum island, a real island in the middle of the city which, as you guessed, is full of museums. The Pergamon Museum was full of ruins from Greece and Turkey, it was huge! Very neat, made us excited about going to those countries. Although we left before seeing the entire place (you can only look at so many statues before it gets old).

That evening we went back to our hostel and hung out with Fernando again and a Aussi/Kiwi couple we had met on our walking tour.

On our last day in Berlin, we went back to the Berlin wall outside Checkpoint Charlie, to take a better look as we kinda flew past it during our tour. We read about the history of it and saw pictures. The story of it comming down is too long to write and many of you probably know it, but it is SO AWESOME. We saw Check Point Charlie which was 1 of 3 American border crossing into and out off East Berlin, then ate lunch at Snack Point Charlie. (cute)

We then went to see another exhibit called the Topography of Terror, which was outside and after an hour of reading and looking at pictures we were very cold, so we did not see the whole thing, but by this point we had a very accurate view of the situation before Hitlers rise to power, the Nazi government, and the rise and fall of the Berlin wall.

J Tuesday morning we headed out toward the train station, and right after jumping on our first S Bahn train/metro we were asked to produce tickets by a pair of plain-clothed officers. Of course if you have been paying attention, you would know that we did indeed pay for tickets and luckily averted the €40 fee/person. We hadn`t been checked up until that point and were beginning to wonder if they even did random checks. Shortly later we were off on a train to our next destination, but we´ll leave that for another post. Caio