Berlin - I'm in love

Some of you may have heard me talk about how much I love Osaka, Japan. I’ve often referred to it as the Melbourne of Japan. Well, in my short time in Europe, I would have to call Berlin the Melbourne of Europe. It has everything, history, culture, activity, life and the soul of an individual. Berlin knows it is different, but has a quiet superiority over other European capitals. Someone get me the t-shirt, because I ‘heart’ Berlin.

We got into Berlin at about 7pm and after check in and settling down for a bit, the crew and myself went out for some food. The crew now consists of Renee from Sydney, Hannah from Newcastle, Clive from Perth, Elleny from Melbourne, Greg from Adelaide and Adrienne from Adelaide. Yes, I was halfway around the planet and hanging out with a bunch of Aussies. We walked around Hackescher Markt looking for a place to eat, when the girls got suckered into sitting down by a waiter and all of a sudden we were eating at some pricey restaurant with an average menu. I had a plan to only eat real German food while in Germany, and hence had the pork, which was very tasty. After most people bitched about the food or price we left the restaurant and looked for a bar. We found a place at the end of a heavily graffitied alley which seemed to be quite popular. Upon walking inside it was decked out like some sort of cheap horror movie with monsters everywhere, and red creepy paint and little monster things in fish tanks set into the bar. We had a few drinks inside and then a few more in the beer garden before heading home to get some sleep before our bike tour the next morning.

Friday morning was bike tour day, and if there is ever somewhere you should do a tour, it’s Berlin. The place has so much history. Endah was our tour guide and was excellent with both his knowledge and delivery. We went through Bebel Platz where the Nazi youths burned over twenty thousand books that didn’t agree with the Nazi’s ideals, down to the Brandenburg Gate, to the Reichstag and more. I won’t go through all of it, as it will sound like a spastic giving a history lesson, but suffice to say there is so much that has happened in Berlin and most of it has some sort of memorial or reminder of its existence.

After the fantastic bike tour we went back to the hostel to chill out for a bit. Hannah and I have decided to split from the busabout for a bit when in Vienna and head over to Budapest for a few days. It should be crazy, as they don’t have a lot of English, and we have zero Hungarian. All part of the fun though! Hannah and I sorted out getting to Budapest, and where we are going to stay. Then we all got ready for the pub crawl. At the pub crawl we went to a whole bunch of bars. Most of which I can’t remember. I was busily chatting up Jessica, the super hot Dutch girl. Unfortunately I suffered a case of being unable to close a barn door, and by 3am it became clear that pretty much everyone I know was stumbling their way home. Luckily our hostel is nearly directly underneath the Berlin TV tower, which is visible from anywhere in Berlin, so my drunken walk home was fairly easy and uneventful.

It is not called a pub crawl because you go to lots of pubs. It’s a pub crawl because when you wake up the next morning, you will feel like a pub just crawled over you. We all felt like 6 bags of dogshit, but we had paid for a walking tour of the third Reich for Friday morning, and nobody wanted to miss it. It was a tough day when your brain is malfunctioning severely, but I made it through the five hour walking tour in blazing sunlight, and I was glad I’d done it. Going through all the places and history that led from the loss of WW1 to the end of Hitler’s third Reich at the end of WW2 was brilliant, even if it was a lot of names and dates that I struggle to recall.

After the third Reich tour ended we were right near the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe so I walked through that. It’s probably the coolest monument I’ve ever seen, as it’s not something you just look at. You can actually walk through it, and it has a definite disorientation about it. After that, we all headed back to our hostel for a rest, some food, and a quiet night in.

On Saturday half the group was going to Prague. Clive, Hannah and I still had two days to explore Berlin. I walked down to the Reichstag, which is basically the German parliament house as you can walk up to the top of the giant glass down and look around. The idea of the clear glass dome is that from now on, anyone can look upon the German government and make sure the mistakes of the past are never repeated. It is a pretty fantastic concept and a brilliant building.

I then made my way down past the Brandenburg gate and found Hannah. We went down to checkpoint Charlie and went through the museum of the same name. Some of the stories of what went on during the construction of the wall and ways people we smuggled out was quite astounding.
After the checkpoint Charlie museum Hannah and I caught the Ubahn (underground) to a section of the Berlin wall where it still has both walls with the death strip in between. It was also very interesting, but sad to see when the Germans on either side of the wall had to go through in their attempt for reunification.
After a full day we went to a traditional German restaurant where I ordered the traditional German specialty of pork knuckle. It tasted great, but it was huge and looked pretty disgusting. I think the German waitress was pretty disappointed when she say how little of it I had managed to eat.

Clive, Hannah and I went out to an entertainment area call Kulture Brueri, which is an old brewery that has been turned into a nightspot with many clubs, bars and a supermarket, which is great for cheap beers that you can walk around the area drinking. We sat outside a bar called “titty twister” for a few drink waiting for the Coyote Ugly show to start at midnight, which was full of German debauchery and fun. We then headed to the club called Franzz, and had a few drinks, but with the exception of one very enthusiastic German gentleman, nobody was dancing so we headed off to an Absinthe bar around the corner. This was the first time I have ever had Absinthe when you melt the sugar cube and mix it with the Absinthe in the style of old time Absinthe users, like Johnny Depp in the Jack the Ripper movie, From Hell. The Absinthe still tastes pretty gross, but it definitely gets cool points for drinking method.

The next morning we headed out to Sachsenhausen memorial and museum. It was the initial design concentration camp where they tested a lot of the things they would use in later concentration camps. Thirty thousand Russian POW’s were killed there, along with countless others. It’s certainly not rivaling Disneyworld for the title of “Happiest Place on Earth”. Pretty much nobody speak while walking around, everyone is just in some sort of solemn trance. It’s hard to believe that what happened could actually happen. I couldn’t get the wash rooms and the morgue out of my head for the rest of the day. Disturbing stuff.

That night we searched out some schnitzel right near our hostel. Unfortunately we got a little lost while looking for it (Hannah’s fault) and walked for ages before realizing where it was and coming back to eat 90minutes after we had left. The schnitzel was good, and we then went down to the city area to take a few photos of the sights at night.

I then packed up my bags in preparation for the early bus departure the next morning when I’ll be heading to Dresden. It’s a pretty country town in Germany and should afford me a few days to do very little and just recover from what is a monster sore throat I have picked up over the last few days. I am sad to be leaving Berlin, but I know one day I will be back here.