berlin, berlin, ich fuhr nach berlin!

Hello all! Yep, I went to Berlin on the weekend! Ola and I left on Friday afternoon at 3pm. We had to change trains twice, and finally arrived in Berlin at 10pm. Wasn't too bad a trip, except that on the ICE, (Inter City Express - the fast trains), the air-con wasn't working!! It was stuffy and warm as! We got free water and juice, but still.....

Anyways, we figured out the S-Bahn and U-Bahn system and found our hostel - East Seven. It was pretty nice. Comfy beds. All good. :)

On Saturday, we headed into the city - 2 stops on the U2 to Alexanderplatz ;) We'd decided to go on a hop-on hop-off tour bus, which we eventually found after 45 mins of looking!! It was good for us, cos Ola could listen in Russian.

We stopped first at Palace Charlottenburg. We spent 3 hours there looking around! It was really interesting and we both really enjoyed it. Although my legs and feet were pretty tired by the end....
We got back on the bus and went the rest of the roundtrip, then getting off near the Berlin Cathedral. It was....well, it was just like all the other cathedrals I've been to in Europe. :) Very decorated and elaborately designed. We went right up to the top and got some really good views of the city. Also saw the crypt underneath it, that was kinda weird....

From there, we went to look at the bears! The bears? I'll just show you a piccis of the Aussie one, but basically, there were 125 painted bears, each from a different country. It's all to do with tolerance and understanding between nations. If you're interested, go to www.buddy-bears.com

We walked down to the Brandenburg Tor then, and because of all the soccer stuff, it wasn't prime photo material... unfortunately...best I could get...!
When we finally got back to the hostel at 10pm we were completely stuffed! Approx 12 hours walking... We didn't even watch Germany beat Portugal!

On Sunday we went to Checkpoint Charlie (if you don't know, it was one of three crossings between East and West Berlin in the Cold War). That was an amazing museum, so much information to read and hear, it took a while to get through and I didn't listen to everything! Some of the ways people escaped were unbelievable - squishing into a converted gas tank being one example.

After that we went to check out some remains of the Wall itself. I can't even describe what it was like to see and to begin to imagine what it would have been like.

We also went to the Jewish Museum, which was really interesting. Learnt quite a lot about them! It's a very modern museum, with a lot of meaning in the architecture. There's one section, can't remember what it was called, but basically, it was an empty space, with huge towering walls and a tiny slit of sunlight at the top. It was the tiniest taste of what it was like to be imprisoned. Wasn't nice.

Hmm....what else....? We wandered around a little more, Potsdamerplatz and then to the WM FanFest! We couldn't get in on Saturday, Germany was playing, was full as a goog!! Anyways, Sunday was a little less crowded! It was cool! It was the size of 12 football pitches....from the Brandenburg Gate to the Victory Column. Crazy! Ola and I didn't walk the whol length, we were too tired, but we went on the giant ferris wheel that was there! Got an awesome view of the rest of the FanFest. :) It was great!! I loved it!!!

We watched the second half of the final, and then we headed to the train station, ready for a night of restless, interrupted and mostly uncomfortable sleep! ;)

It was a really good weekend, and I'm glad I was in Berlin for the World Cup stuff, but I'd like to see the Brandenburg Gate in it's normal state! There's also so much other stuff I didn't get too! Who knows!

That's all for now!! :)
Love Vivien