19.08.2007

At the time of writing this (New York – we got a little behind again), I have already posted home the Lonely planet guide to Europe, so I apologise for the numerous mis-spellings of places or inaccuracies of explanations here-after:-

We jumped on the metro to Haymarket Square again. Here we wanted to look at a famous market area called Haymarket Hoff, a warren of about 12 connected courtyards housing shops and apartments. Unfortunately most shops we found in Berlin were closed on Sundays. We walked south to the square again where you can clearly see the ‘TV Tower’, a 368m tall spire, with a restaurant and viewing platform at about the 200m mark. This tower is actually visible from almost anywhere in Berlin and is very handy for orientation. We headed south west through the Museam Island, an island in the river that has 4 different museums on it. We continued onto Unter Den Lindon, the main street of East Berlin. It runs from the Museum Island right through to the Brandenburg Gate. The street is lined with a university, various embassies and important buildings. On one of the squares at the Humbolt University we saw a memorial of the first of the Nazi book burnings. This is made up of a glass floor in a part of the square that looks down to empty bookshelves below.

On our way to the Brandenburg gate, we noticed about 50 police trucks, each full or surrounded by about 12 police. When taking photos of the gate, we asked a local why all the police. She told us there was a demonstration for free speech or something happening within the hour.

The gate itself used to be the main entrance to the city and connects East Berlin with the Tier Garten (the central park) and was incorporated into the Berlin Wall as one of the major checkpoints. North of this we visited the Wall victims memorial (191 people died trying to cross the wall) and onto the Reichstag. The Reichstag is an old parliament building where a fire broke out in 1933 which Hitler blamed the communists for and allowed him to take power. The building is stunning, and beautifully set on the rivers edge. It also overlooks the Tier Garten. We spent some time walking through the Tier Garten which was a very nice park, with gardens and forest in the middle.

We exited on the south east side and made our way into Sony Centre. This is a massive steel and glass comlex surrounding a central courtyard that is sheltered by a tent like peak of glass and wire. Quite impressive. There is an Australian restaurant here, but we resisted the urge to have some damper with cheese.

There is a section of the wall outside with some explanations of the ‘death strip’. The wall itself was on the actual border between the east and west or Berlin, there was another wall a few metres in on the East side. Between these walls the border gaurds patrolled and this was called the Death Strip, I think the Sony Centre is on these grounds, might be wrong. We headed south along the path of the wall to try to see the Topography of Terrors and Checkpoint Charlie but our path was interrupted just next to the former site of Hitler’s Bunker by council employees guarding some red taped border. After asking someone, we learned that the area was roped off for the shooting of Tom Cruise’s new movie Valkyrie so we had to take a large detour. I took a photo of some of the set including an old truck. We heard later that on that night a bunch of cast were injured when they fell off a truck during filming, I wonder if it was the same one :-)

We saw the Topography of Terrors, a section of wall which has details of the events and methods used by the SS but we didn’t get anything out of it because it was only in German. There is almost nothing to see at Checkpoint Charlie, except the sign still standing saying ‘You are now leaving the American Sector’. We then headed back to Unter Den Lindon for some well deserved Hagen Daas ice-cream.

That night we went for dinner on Haymarket Square and later to a bar further north called the Berger Bar, a cool little indie joint which apparently hasn’t been redecorated since the GDR days. It also hosts regular “Russian disco” nights.

18.08.2007

The drive to Berlin was long enough after only a short sleep. The countryside is really pretty the whole way. Just as we were about to reach the German border we started seeing these little wood cabins on the sides of the road, with prostitutes in their underwear and long coats waiving towards us. It was a sad note to our last few minutes in this country.

After the German border we were treated to some nice villages (think Hahndorf but even more German) before happily arriving on the famous German Highways. The Megane handled an average speed of 160km comfortably. On our way into Berlin, we drove past our first glimpses of the remains of the Berlin Wall. We arrived at the Holiday Inn in Mitte in time for a bit of a snooze before heading out for dinner.

We got a little dressed up because it was a Saturday night. Neda wore a dress. Once we got out of the Metro Station, we got some funny looks. After looking around we noticed that we couldn’t find any women in dresses, they were all wearing pants or jeans and top, usually a T-shirt. It seemed as if legs were a rare sight. Neda got a bit annoyed with all the staring. We ate Japanese at this nice little courtyard near Haymarket. Neda ordered a wine and I ordered a beer. The waitress came back with a wine and something green in a fat cocktail glass with 2 straws. Upon enquiring I found that this was the beer I ordered, a typical Berlin Weiss beer brewed with some kind of flavour which the waitress couldn’t remember the English for. I will do some research. To me it hardly tasted like beer but is very refreshing. Doesn’t go well with raw tuna though.