I took a bus from Antwerp to Dusseldorf, and that bus was late (I think). Either way, I missed my connecting train and had to try and get Deutsch Bahn to pay for it. The first person I talked to told me, no, but then the second person I spoke to said that it was hard to tell and signed my ticket saying that it is ok for me to take the next train. This was good because I did not want to pay another 100 euros for another ticket.
I finally arrived in Berlin later in the evening at the HBF. I then took a subway to Alexanderplatz and walked the rest of the way to the hostel. Once I got to the hostel, I checked in and dropped off my backpack. The person at the hostel check-in told me where to find a street full of nice bars.
I decided to go check out a couple of those bars and eventually went to two. They both had a nice local feel. One way I could tell tourists, at least foreign ones, did not go to these bars often is that the one bartender kept forgetting I did not speak German. After enjoying these two bars, I headed off back to the hostel to have a sleep.
First Full Day
To start my trek on the first day, I took the subway back to Alexanderplatz. This is where I began to walk towards the infamous Berlin Wall. This is also the first time I got a good look at the 'Television Asparagus'. Throughout the rest of the trip, it was always easy to find and sort of guided me wherever I was in Berlin. The first big stop on my way to the wall was the Berlin Cathedral.
photo of St. Mary's church with Television Asparagus in background
St. Mary's Church
Television Asparagous
The Berlin Cathedral
Interior of the Berlin Cathedral
A few paintings in the Berlin Cathedral
Interior of Berlin Cathedral
View from Berlin Cathedral
The Cathedral itself is beautiful, but its history is even more exciting. The Cathedral started out as Catholic but then became protestant. It was also bombed during WWII, and one of the bombs lit the roof on fire. The roof eventually collapsed because of this. The preacher of the Cathedral kept doing services after this in the crypt. After the war, it mainly went unrestored since it was in East Berlin and they did not believe in religion. It was never entirely destroyed by authorities because it meant a lot to the local residents. The preacher of the Cathedral during the war was Bruno Doehring.
Eventually, I made my way to the infamous Berlin Wall. The part I saw was, of course, the Brandenburg Gate. The gate was actually built before the wall, which I did not know about. When the wall itself went up, the Gate was closed to both vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The west side of the gate was the location of a few famous events during the cold was such as protests by the people of West Berlin and the speech where Ronald Regan said: "tear down this wall".
While hanging around the wall, I noticed that the American flag and a little further away the Canadian flag. Assuming these were the embassies I decided to go check them out, but first I grabbed a Gluhwein for the trip. The contrast between the two embassies was hilarious. The American embassy is what you would expect from an embassy, a large walled in building with a security guard in front. The Canadian embassy, on the other hand, had a sign saying "Open to the public!" and then an exhibit with information about Canada. The was also a guard outside who explained to me that just the first part of the embassy is open to the public and to go further inside you need a passport. It also wasn't a walled building either it looked more of like a shared office building.
I then went out to look at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. When I first saw it I actually accidentally stumbled on it and initially did not know what it is. It was an impressive memorial, almost like a maze. There have been many interpretations of the memorial. It was built where around the main parts of the Hitler organization.
The memorial
Next stop was the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism. This memorial was built in the Tiergarten park near the Memorial to the Murdered Jews. This park was historically used as a hunting area for the rulers of the region. Now it is just a public park. I walked around it for a while looking at some sculptures and the beautiful scenery before going for lunch.
A couple of statues in Tiergarten
After lunch, I went to Humbolt University and toured around some. Oddly enough the student cafe had a Canadian flag by the till. The most interesting site is a memorial to the book burning done by the NAZIs which was accompanied by a speech by Joseph Goebbels. This memorial is a bunch of empty bookshelves in a room underground. The bookshelves can contain 20,000 books which are roughly the amount that was burnt during that particular book burning. The room can be seen from a window in the sidewalk.
The empty bookshelves
I also stopped by the Russian Embassy. It is a massive building that was left over as a relic from the cold war. It was built to show off the power of the Soviets. I asked the guard in front if I could take some photos of it and he said yes. To me, personally, it just looked like a huge old brick building.
Russian Embassy
By Jörg Zägel - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14770814
The next stop was a museum about the Berlin wall which really opened my eyes to how weird the situation was surrounding it. I forget exactly what this museum was called, but it could be this one https://thewallmuseum.com/. The oddest part was that when the wall went up no one was notified until it started, and some people still worked on the other side of the wall. For those people who lived on one side and worked on the other, they were S.O.L. Such an odd situation.
After this long day, I went back to the hostel and slept.
Day 2
At the start of the second day, I went back to Alexanderplatz and got a coffee from Starbucks. Then I opened https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Berlin to look for a cool place to go. The first place I decided to go to was the Red City Hall.
It is called the Red City Hall because of the red brick not because of the Soviets. It is the current city hall of Berlin and was the city hall of East Berlin. It apparently has some excellent sites inside but for some stupid reason, it is closed on the weekends 😕 so I could not go inside 😒.
The Red Ciry Hall
I then made my to the Olympic Stadium. It was built during Hitler's time for the 1936 Olympics. It has been used continuously after that for various sporting events and is still a world-class facility. When I was there, they were getting ready for a football match (or soccer whichever you prefer), so it was cool to see the build up.
Olympic Stadium
I also went to the DDR museum which described life in East Germany. The life for those people was so weird the technology they had was antiquated because of their limited trade partners. Transit tickets were given out by pulling a lever and people were supposed to pay because of social pressure, but the result was no one paid for the tickets. The weirdest part was that daycare children had collective potty breaks to 'instill a feeling of community'. It is fair to say I would not have survived in East Germany.
I toured WinterfledPlatz looking around and drinking gluhwein. It had a lot of cool stuff. After that, I walked around Akazien-Goltzstrabe and toured around. It was a part of the city that was not entirely destroyed by bombs, so it was refreshing to walk around.
This was the end of the tour since I headed to the hostel then got on the train back to Ghent.
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