We love Berlin
Trip Start
Aug 06, 2007
1
24
47
Trip End
Nov 22, 2007
Berlin,
Germany
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Well its our last night in Berlin and am about to go to bed. Its been a great experience visiting this very facinating city. Yesterday (Sat 1st Sep) we went to the Jewish Museum which was designed by a Jewish American and it is a very cool building. The exibits went through the History of German Jews and how they first came to Germany etc, it also obviously detailed the Holocaust which is always quite depressing but interesting at the same time. oh before we went to the Museum we went down to the longest stretch of the Wall that still stands, its a 1.3 kn strech that is covered in Graphiti and Art so its like an open air Gallery. Some of the 'art' is very good. We then went walking where the wall once stood where they have converted the space into gardens. Its quite weird knowing that you are actually walking down the path of a wall that separated two countries and where many people died trying to escape but its also good to see that they have rebuilt or are continually rebulding the City and looking beyond the Past. Berlin is a very safe city, you do not at feel unsafe walking around at night like we did last night at 3am. We went to a very strange Club which was underneath a Park so underneath the ground. It was kind of dark and a little strange but cool at the same time. We stayed there for a little while but the techno music isn't our thing so we left there and went to 'Dr Pong' very funny, its a dodgy looking bar that has a Table Tennis table and eveyone has a bat in one hand and a beer in the other and they all walk around in a circle around the table hitting the ball to each other, if they miss the ball then they are out until there are 2 people left who then play a game to decide the winner. Ping Pong is huge here so much so that there are permanent tables in all of the parks so anyone can play and most Berliners walk around with their Bat in their bag...very funny
Today we had a bit of a sleep in and then went and had the cheap breaky buffet, afterwards we went to a Trash n Treasure market where there was more trash than tresure but very funny to see what these people are selling. then we went to the Wall Documentation centre which has a heap of pictures from 1960 when the temporary barbed wire fence boundary first went up until 1990 when the wall came down. The photos that really catch your eye are ones where you see family members on either side of the wall back in the 60's when youcould actually see over it calling to each other, it must have been so sad for them. They also had an Video showing an aerial view that was taken around the perimieter of the wall in 1990 just as the wall was started to be demolished. Most of the entire 150km was still up at this stage but the border checkpoints where not manned anymore so people could go freely between each side. You could recongnise parts where there are now buildings and housing that was just empty space back then, in some parts the width of the area between the Inner and outer walls was 200m wide which is a lot of waisted land.
Anyway that pretty much sums up Berlin, i could go on for hours but i won't bore you anymore. I just love this city and wish we had more time but we have another city to explore tomorrow, Prague , a 4.5 hr train ride across Eastern Germnay and into the Czech Republic.
here is the link to our Germany pics that we like and also now includes Berlin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/melvic/sets/72157601744911850/
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