History Filled Berlin

Trip Start May 01, 2007
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Trip End Apr 29, 2008


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Thursday, July 19, 2007

Berlin is another one of those budget-traveller's paradises. Much to our surprise, it was really easy to stay on budget while we were there. The area of town we stayed in was a bit shady, however the prices were fantastic. There was an Italian restaurant right next to our hostel with great plates of pasta, or nice pizzas for only about €2.50! We ended up discovering that the neighbourhood we were staying in was in the former East Berlin which probably accounted for the low prices.
We started off our stay in Berlin with an 8 hour walking tour of town, put on by Brewer's Berlin Tours
http://www.brewersberlintours.com/. For only €12 each, we had a very informative, entertaining and extremely extensive walking tour of East and West Berlin. We learned all about the history of the Berlin wall and life behind the Iron Curtain. The wall was actually built entirely on East German territory, completely surrounding West Berlin. It was built to prevent Easterners escaping to the West. It's weird to think that the West Berliners were the ones fenced in, but it was the Easterners that were the prisoners. I really can't say enough about how great the tour was, and we certainly recommend it to anyone visiting Berlin. One thing our tour guide told us about really cracked us up: the city of Berlin has every single tree in town numbered. Every tree you look at has a unique number plate on it. They know exactly how many trees there are in town. I have never in my life heard of anything so completely anally retentive as that. I guess a naughty night out in Berlin might involve swapping some tree number plates around - it'd probably cause quite a stir! We met up with two nice couples on the tour (Aussie and American) who we had some laughs with as well.
We walked along one of the longer (2km) remaining sections on the Berlin wall where international artists painted different murals along it after it fell. Some of them were quite powerful. Another attraction that was quite interesting was the "Topography of Terror" a museum about the SS and Gestapo during Nazi Germany - how they were formed, operated and some of the people the imprisoned and killed.
Travellers beware: You'll probably want to spend more time in Berlin then you might have originally planned.
So after enjoying days of cheap vacationing, it's back to spending a ton of money to live. Next stop: Amsterdam. Stay tuned...
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