day1
I spent the weekend over in Berlin. It was a pretty nice city with some really cool architecture (since it had to rebuild pretty much everything). The weather was damn cold though, but it's alright. The first thing we went to check out was Brandenburg gate, one of the more famous symbols of Berlin. Along the way we stumbled across the Auto Gallery and saw the fastest car in the world (fastest production vehicle), the Bugatti Veyron. It was pretty nice, but i've seen nicer looking cars but since it's can go over 400 km/h, gotta give it some props. We eventually got to brandenburg gate and took a few pics before going to a few museums.
On a quick side note, after the unification, most of the stuff adopted was West Berlin stuff, but the East managed to keep 1 thing, the walking/no walking pedestrian lights.
Along the way to the first museum we ran across a few sites. The first is the neue wache, which is a memorial to victims of war (they're tomb of the unknown soldier).
The other was the berliner dom, which is their big church.
The first museum we went to was the Pergamon museum. It was located on museum island which is a collection of 5 museums built in old prussian buildings. Inside the museums they had a bunch of ancient building (original and recreations) such as the ishtar gate and the Pergamon Altar.
After that we went to the Jewish Museum. This was definately one of the cooler museums i've been in, but more for the architecture. The museum is 2 building, 1 normal, old style building, and 1 cube. From the outside they don't look related at all and you enter through the old building and go to the cube via an underground tunnel. The underground area was really cool, it's made up of 3 axies, the axis of exile, terror and continuation. The axis of exile leads to an area with many displaced blocks to symbolize the displayment of the Jews as they fled. The axis of terror led to the holocaust tower. The tower was an empty vertical column where everything is blocked off and there is no lighting or anything. It's meant to symbolize the hopelessness as you can't interact, or see anything outside. The path leading to the tower is also sloped at a 12 degree angle to throw people off as well. The last axis leads to the museum. The museum was designed by Daniel Libeskind would won the redesigning of the World Trade Center site and has some really trippy stuff. The museum also had a bunch of neat techy stuff like a really cool like a nice 3D movie thing and book that you blow on and the text appears on a computer screen.
The next day we decided to hit up some palaces. The first one we went to was in Berlin and was called schloss charlottenburg.
It was like all the other palaces i've seen in Germany, not to say it was bad but was just more of the same thing so it doesn't have as much of that "WOW'' factor.
We took a quick break to find some World Cup stuff but I couldn't find what i was looking for. Along the way we saw the old semi-destroyed church, Gedachtnis Kirche. It as been restored to be safe but kept the ruined look as a reminder of the horrors of war.
Afterwards we took the train to a Potsdam, a small town south west of Berlin. In Potsdam there is a park with a bunch of palaces and nice buildings and stuff. The first building we saw was St. Nicholas church near the train station. After a short bus ride we got the the park.
here's the dragon house.
The orangery palace.
An old windmill.
And schloss sanssouci.
Since the buildings were closed when we got there I don't know much about the history.
When we got back to Berlin, we decided to check out some of the sights at night so we headed over to brandenburg gate.
Afterwards we went to the Dome in the Reichstag. The Reichstag was the building that was set on fire and started Hitler's rise to his dictatorship. He blamed the fire on the Communists and the rest is history. They rebuilt the building and added a cool glass dome at the top in which you can get a good view of the city.
Keegan's boss recommended a tea house to visit for dinner called Tadshikische Tesstube. There was a exhibition from Tajikistan and they left all their stuff behind and the resturant took it and used it as their theme. The food is mainly Russian and has many teas from around the world. We had some soup, tea and desert there. The atmosphere was really cool there and was an ideal place to just sit and chill. The hot tea was also a nice break from the cold.
On the last day, Keegan wanted to go into the Reichstag (where the parliament meets) so we managed to talk our way in.
Afterwards, we went on a walking tour to check out some of the stuff we missed. The first thing was the hotel adalon, which is the hotel that Micheal Jackson did his notorious baby dangle.
Next we walked by the jewish holocaust memorial which is a whole bunch of various sized concrete blocks. The weird thing is that the bunker Hitler spent his last moments at is practically right beside the memorial. The bunker has been destroyed though and there's no signs or anything for it.
One of the most known (good and bad) things of Berlin is the Berlin wall. It was put up by the soviet in 58 hours and encircled West Berlin to keep the East Berliner out and Western culture from leaking into the East. Sounds weird that it encircled West Berlin but you have to remember that Germany was split into American, British, French and Soviet regions. Berlin was in the Soviet region and everyone wanted a part of it, so Berlin was split in to 4 as well. Most of the wall is gone now some some sections still exist (and are very bland).
Another famous landmark is checkpoint charlie, one of the 3 checkpoints along the wall. This one is a recreation as the original is in some museum. By the checkpoint is the famous sign stating you are entering or leaving the US zone.
Another big event back in the day was the Nazi book burning. It was in a square by the University and 20 thousand books were burned. At the site is a window which you can see empty bookshelves. The bookshelves can hold 20,000 books. One interesting fact is at the University there was a guy that was writting a play about the Spanish oppressing the Jews and one of the quotes is listed here. I'm took lazy to give the exact translation but it's roughly "they started burning books and then soon, people". Some crazy foreshadowing kinda stuff.
After the walking tour we went to alexanderplatz to take a look at the TV tower as well as the surrounding area.
There was also a massive foosball thing built, but they had no ball so we couldn't play, but it woulda been awesome.
After a quick trip to the olympic stadium to look for World cup stuff (finals are played here, still didn't find what i was looking for) we headed back for dinner.
After dinner we went to Potsdamer platz, which is the modern section of Berlin with lots of flashy lights and building and stuff. One of the cooler areas was the Sony center.
After checking out the area a bit we head to the airport to get some sleep before flying out early the next morning. We got back at around 10ish and go to work at around 11. All in all it was a nice trip and Berlin is a great city.
till next time.
