Berlin
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Berlin,
Germany
Monday, July 23, 2007
Next exciting installment......
Finally left Prague after being stuck in traffic (grrr!) and we headed to Germany to meet the others in Berlin.. Quick stop in Dresden across the border to stock up on food and then off to meet the others in a campsite just outside of Potsdam, near Berlin. Typical that we ended up joining the others on a pub crawl as soon as we got into Berlin but it was well worth it - 12 euros got us free beer for an hr and free vodka shots in between bars, great for us kiwis on a budget. Luckily we had to catch the last train back to Potsdam just before 1 am otherwise the hangovers would have been much worse.
Went back into Berlin the next day and visited the Jewish Memorial for the Murdered People (or something along those lines) - just around from the Brandenburg Gate. It is amazing, an area covered in hundreds of concrete blocks, all different heights, like a maze. Finding the actual entrance to the underground memorial is a bit of a mission as you can get easily lost but it is well worth the trip. We then walked to Checkpoint Charlie which was where east met west and was the only way through the wall. After that we caught the train to the longest surviving part of the Berlin wall which has been covered with amazing graffiti art. Back to the camp for a quiet night.
We left the campsite early the next morning and caught the train back into Berlin to do a bike tour, too lazy to do a walking tour - definitely a must do as they (and the walking tours) are free and loaded with information. The tour guide was great, very funny guy, full of info about Berlin. We visited all the famous sights....Brandenburg gate (once seperated East and West Berlin), Hitlers Bunker, Checkpoint Charlie, Reichstag (parliament) and lots of other signifcant museums and memorials. Had lunch at a traditional German restaurant, tried the Currywurst which is seasoned sausage with curry sauce and fries. It wasn't KFC but it still got the thumbs up from me.
The weather was crap so we decided to leave Berlin and push through to the Polish border, along with Mads and Kim while the others headed to Czech.
That's all for now.
Ants & Cy
