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The Victory Parade
Entry 18 of 36 | show all | print this entry |
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11 Feb 2008
This morning we got going bright and early in order to beat the crowds to the Reichstag. We had a quick breakfast of the last two slices of our loaf of bread and topped with some cheese slices. While we were eating we put the TV on and came across what looked like your fairly standard American teenage sit-com, the actress whole plays Buffy's sister in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of the main characters. The show had been dubbed into German so we were not sure exactly what was going on but the general idea was that there was a group of 4 friends, Americans, travelling in Europe on something like a Gap year. Everything seemed fairly harmless until we were subjected to full frontal male nudity. It was the punch line to a fairly feeble jest about three teenage boys visiting a nudist beach. Not what you want to see at the best of times but defintiely not first thing n the morning while you are trying to eat breakfast.
After breakfast we got to our local train station just after 8:00am, arriving at the Reichstag just on 8:30am. There were two other couples who had also had the same idea as we had, a French couple and a British couple. To enter the Reichstag you have to go through a door that is essentially an airlock - i.e. you walk into a small room with a door at either end. You must then wait until the door to the outside has closed before the door to the inside will open. Once you have cycled through this system of doors, they subject you to a security check, much like the airport but more thorough. We put out belongs through the x-ray machine, I was required to lift my hat and before I knew it I was being frisked and required to completely turn out my pockets and then send my wallet and our passports through the x-ray machine. We all regathered our belongings and the the six of us were ushered into an elevator that takes you to the roof of the Reichstag. Once on the roof we started up the dome. There are two ramps spiraling up the inside of the dome to a floor at the top of the dome from which you get panoramic views of Berlin. You head up the one ramp and come down the other. We did note that the glass dome of the Reichstag could do with bit of a clean and felt that they could probably take a leaf out of the Russians' book - there was always someone cleaning in Russia. On that, it has been interesting to note that in Moscow there was virtually no graffiti on walls or in the Metro, in St Petersburg there was noticeably more graffiti around the place and on the Metro but nothing in comparison to what you see in Melbourne. In Berlin, graffiti is rife in the streets and in the train carriages. Not quite sure what this says but perhaps that in the West we have less respect for community property. I mentioned the two other couples who entered the Reichstag with us because they were interesting to watch. The British couple seemed to be on their honeymoon and while they did not subject us to any PDAs, they were at least happy to be in each others company. The French couple could also possibly have been on their honeymoon but we felt sorry for the guy because his partner seemed to have got out on the wrong side of the bed this morning as she was grumpy the whole way into the reichstag, through the security check, up the elevator, and up and down the dome ramps.
We had coffee at the rooftop cafe and then headed out to the Tiergarten as we planned to walk the length of it from the Brandenburg gate at one end to the golden monument of Victoria, the Goddess of Victory at the other end. On the way we stopped at the Russian World War II memorial which seems to be in what would have been West Berlin so I am not sure exactly how it came to be built there. Tiergarten is about 1.7km from Brandenburg Gate to the Victoria monument so by the time we had finished the walk we were both starting to feel a little peckish given our fairly meager breakfast this morning. Currywurst Time! Having sampled the best that Old West Berlin could offer, at 195 Kurfurstemdam, we decided to sample what was on offer at the most famous Currywurst stall in Old East Berlin. To get there we needed to catch a bus from just near the Victory monument in order to get to a U-Banh Station. We found the bus stop, shecked the routes availabe and confiently decided we needed the N26 and not the 106 that arrived at the bus stop shortly after we did. The bus driver looked at us a bit odly as we just sat in the bus stop making no effort to board his vehicle. The lights changed and he pulled away and we went on waiting for the N26 to arrive. Turns out we would have been waiting some time for the N26, you see the N stands for 'night', the N26 runs between Midnight and 4am. Not wanting to wait over 12 hours for the next bus we sheepishly got on the next 106 bus to arrive and headed to the U-Bahn. to see what was on offer on that side of town.
The guide book directed us to Konnopke's Imbiss at the Eberswalder Strasser Station, where they have been serving Currywurst for over 75 years. Arriving at the station we headed down to street level and looked for the Imbiss stand. We did come across one immediately below the station that sold not just Currywurst but also Doner Kebabs. This didn't seem quite right so I prevented Belle from ordering anything and suggested that we should explore a little further. Rechecking the directions in the guide book we discovered we needed to head to an area immediate below the elevated train tracks to the south of the station. Skirting a large newsstand, with the unlikely name of Akuna Matada (think 'The Lion King' - no idea), we spotted an Imbiss stand with lots of tables and a large queue. On getting closer we spotted the name Konnopke and knew we were in the right place. We ordered a Currywurst with pomme frites each, handed over 6 Euro and found ourselves a table to sample what was on offer. We both agreed that this was definitely the best of the wurst and were glad we had made the trip East.
After resting for a little while we headed off to the East Side Gallery, which is one of the few, and one of the longest, remaining sections of the Berlin Wall. Consulting the directions in the guide book we chose the U-Bahn Station we needed to get of at and hopped our train. As the train went along we spotted the East Side Gallery on the opposite side of the river Spree to that to which we had been directed by the guidebook. The guidebook has managed to print a map tracing the course of the Berlin wall on exactly the opposite bank of the river to where it actually ran. We walked back across the river and spent some time wandering this section of wall and getting some photos. After that it was back onto the U-Bahn to head to the KaWaDe department store that we had tried to visit on Sunday only to be prevented by the unanticipated closure of Berlin. The department store is probably best described as an up-market version of David Jones. They have an incredible food hall on the 6th floor where you can find just about any foodstuff you can imagine. We visited the toy section where I drooled over the incredible range of HO and N scale model trains and we concluded that Stife Teddy Bears plush toys might be world famous but they don't feel particularly soft or cuddly. In the kitchen department we came across the 'Classic' range of Wusthof Trident Kitchen Knives for about 50% less than you can find them in Australia, we know have a japanese cooks knife and a filleting knife. we wandered the book section and stationary sections, picking up a couple of small items in the process.
After leaving KaWaDe we went in search of the German bakery we had gone past yesterday. We retraced our steps back to the Zoologischer Garten S-Bahn satation were we found the purveyor of fine baked goods. We picked up a couple of very German sounding items to have latter for our desert and then headed back onto the train system for a trial run of getting out to the airport. We leave Berlin for Rome at 7:00am on Wedensday morning and therefore have to be at the airport as close to 5:00am as possible, to ensure we get pole position for the race to good seats on the EasyJet plane. The train system gets started for the morning from 4:00am and we are hoping to catch a 4:08am train from out local train stop to start the 50-60 minute journey to the airport, not including the time taken at each of the two transitions - a train to train interchange and a train to bus interchange. As long as we get to the airport before 6:20am we will at least be able to check-in, EasyJet check-in closes promptly 40 minutes before the flight departs, hence the 6:20am deadline. After satisfying ourselves we knew how best to get to the airport and where we needed to head to when we arrived we set off back to our hostel for the evening, Tomorrow marks our last day in Berlin and the last easy day before we commence our nine day sprint through Rome, Madrid and Paris, 3 days in each city, before we slowing things down again for our final 5 day stop in London.
Before I close, a big note of thanks to my big brother John for his advice to bring the moist toilet tissue wipes you can get in the supermarket at home these days. German toilet paper is firm and unyielding, muck like German women are rumoured to be, and my rear end is thankful I chose to follow my brothers advice. More thumbnails ...
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