Grand City Berlin

This is going to be a great gulp of air between the 5 years in university and 16 months at IBM =]

... Mobile to Montgomery Mobile to New Orleans Mobile to Orlando (almost ) Germany to Austria (RT) Germany to Switzerland Ludwigshaffen (RT) Germany to Russian Occupied Berlin Behind Iron Curtain DIPLOMAT TRAIN More to ocme on Europe Scandanavia

This is a travel diary of the Allan's first overseas trip - and we haven't done it by half! The first part of our trip covers the major cities of the grand old US of A, then it is on to the United Kingdom and Europe.

This is the travelogue of Tom and Charles' round the world trip over the Christmas/New Year of 2004 and 2005. It'll be heaps of fun and very different and enriching, so read along and follow our first grand adventure as brothers!

... our adventure is underway! To Dublin via Tokyo we go, then later to weird and wonderful parts of Europe. Pints, green hills and other grand things await! We'll keep you informed and we'll upload photos when we can. In return we only ask that you send us ...

... But i am happy now because I am here now and Berlin is beautiful I think I am gonna just head over to my hotel the Grand City Berlin Mitte, and get unpacked and settled in. i will start my exploring tomorrow. O before I forget. So far I have spent: ...

... 11 hours. We went up to a viewing deck on top of a building on the Potsdamer Platz for a bird’s eye view of the city. Berlin is a remarkably low city, with most buildings less than 10 storeys. This one was around 25 floors high, with entry only ...

... other than the stunning Grand Place and stuffing myself with mussels and frites, I don't think I particularly enjoyed the city.  Berlin, surely, will be different from Brussels, and even different from Cologne... Just a random note about ...

... back home and we were seriously sleep deprived. After waking up we made the trek to Mustafa's, apparently the best kebab stand in Berlin, and it certainly didn't disappoint! However, because it is so popular the line is MASSIVE and it i literally a little ...

... the time in Berlin, was doing a bit more sightseeing. Unfortunately, one church we tried to see was covered in scaffolding, the Berlin Victory column was in scaffolding, the line to another sight wouldn't taken hours in the pouring rain to sit through, ...

... hours to get our site seeing in...Once we finished we had a chance to catch a bit of yet another Weinachtmarkt in Berlin. Not quite as special as our first experience! Later that evening Tati, Adam and I escaped to grab some grub at a tasty Viet ...

... then travelled to large modern market, named Potsdamer Platz.  This Square was built after 1991 with the idea of giving Berlin a common city center.  It has a feel of an American Mall, with many eating shops located in the middle of a covered ...

... building) with its dome spiral (but the line was too long to go up). We saw a piece of the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburger Tor city gate, which in old times was the wall crossing point, and finally the War Victims Memorial where ...

... the trip but not enough to stop our enthusiastic photo taking of various drive by sites such as the stone Berlin Bear which marks the entrance to the city, and Lego land's near life sized Lego giraffe. The youth hostel, when we arrived, seemed specially ...

... the Brandenburg Gate, between the Reichstag, is a brick line in the ground.  This line runs all through the city as a marker of where the Berlin Wall used to stand.  It's very interesting to see how it runs right through the center of the ...

... inspired and kicked towards the finish. Around a corner and ahead was the Brandenburg Gate.  It dates back to when Berlin was a walled city.  Itīs got a great statue on the top and I was inspired to run right through the middle.  ...

... the extremely long queue times. The view at the top was good but most of it was closed off "due to the weather". Nevertheless Berlin's skyline was still easily visible and great views of the Hbf were offered from the glass dome. It was dark by the time ...

... cafe in the station for an hour. Went to the supermarket and got food for the hostel. Went back to the hostel. Got a City Bus tour of Berlin where we stopped at the berlin wall and checkpoint charlie, and at a cafe for 'lunch', a market where we wandered ...

My trip to Berlin started off with an overnight flight from Houston to Berlin Tegel airport via Frankfurt, with a grand total of two hours of sleep.  Upon arrival in Berlin, the first order of business was to stand in a horrendous BVG line for a ...

... . I guess its the rocking... but I did wake up a few times when it became a bit colder... brrrr.... The train reached Berlin Lichtenberg Station at 745am. After which we alighted to take the S-bahn which is free to Jannowitzbrucke, and then buy a ticket ...

The next place on my grand tour of Europe was the city of Berlin. The capital of Germany. Or is it Frankfurt? Eh who cares. I almost didn't even make it to Berlin because apparently Amsterdam has more than one train station and our reservation was on a ...