Berlin is a pretty fascinating place. I've now been to quite a few places with a lot of history (Utrecht was originally settled in 47 CE!), but nowhere with as much recent tumultuous history as the capital of Germany.
I'm going to organize these posts a bit differently. Instead of dealing with the chronological order of my trip, I'm going to sort the posts together by different themes. Hope that's okay with everyone; don't really care if it isn't.
So then, this post will serve as the introduction.
I essentially had two full days in the city. My bus left Amsterdam at 11:00 pm and arrived at 9 the next morning. We made a lot of weird stops at all hours of night in the middle of nowhere; I became convinced that my bus drivers were smuggling drugs or something of that sort.
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The bus station you arrive at is a fair ways off from the city center, but Berlin has a glut of rail lines, both above and underground. I found my way to the underground station and set off for the center.
Make no bones about it: Berlin is not a nice looking city. Some of the transit stations looked as if they'd been abandonded for a hundred years.
Furthermore, the S-Bahn train system runs primarily above ground, and so there are huge rail tresses that carve their way through the city. It's not uncommon to come across lots that are full of nothing but weeds and dead trees, like so.
But hey, give this city a break. Berlin had the hell bombed out of it in World War II. The Nazis built giant monstrosities of buildings that were turned into rubble by British and American planes who carpet-bombed the city.
And then not only was the city physically divided by a wall from 1961-1989, but half of it was run by communists who saw this as inspiring architecture:
Since the city reunited a little less than twenty years ago, the place has undergone a complete rebirth. I've never seen so many cranes. Berlin is now one giant building site.
But, understandably, rebuilding a city takes a while. It's still a work-in-progress.
One of the most famous attractions in Berlin is the Brandenberg Gate.
The Brandenberg Gate is the only remaining gate of the few that governed access into central Berlin. It was built 220 years ago.
The gate opens up onto the famous Unter den Linden, the road which led directly to the royal residence and was the site of all the important buildings in Berlin. Only the King was allowed to travel through the central archway, which is slightly larger. All other traffic passed through the side archways.
The statue above it, the Quadriga (goddess of victory), has a bit of history of its own.
When Napoleon conquered Prussia in 1806, he took the statue above the gate back to Paris as a victory symbol (Napoleon wasn't known for his modesty). When Napoleon was defeated 8 years later, the Prussians took back the statue and refixed it atop the gate. Today the French embassy is in the square that extends out from the Brandenberg Gate, and--I'm still not sure if this was intentional or not--the Quadriga is staring directly at it.
The Gate miraculously survived World War II, but became a symbol of the Cold War when it was closed because the Berlin Wall ran right beside it. The Gate itself was on the East German side. It was here that Ronald Reagan gave his famous "tear down this wall!" speech, and when the wall was torn down the leaders of West and East Germany met each other by walking through the Gate from either side.
When I was there, the Pariser Platz, the square the Brandenberg Gate sits on, was crawling with police. I found out later it was because the Prince of Monaco was visiting.
Fun fact: also on that square is the hotel where Michael Jackson hung his baby over the railing to the paparazzi.
The Pariser Platz was where I met up with a walking tour that I decided to go on. It was a free tour that operated solely on tips for its guides, so the guides were supposed to be pretty good.
Our tour guide was a 24-year-old American named Mike. He was an okay guide, but in my opinion wasn't as smart as he tried to make himself sound.
The tour met up outside the Starbucks at Pariser Platz. Starbucks was a real friend of mine in Berlin. I did so much walking and needed quite a few breaks to rest my weary legs. Sitting in a big comfy chair, drinking my Venti dark roast, reading a good book, jazzy but mellow tunes playing in the background, knowing the counter staff would speak fluent English...yeah, that's the stuff.
It was pretty funny; on one of my Starbucks breaks, a young guy and girl sat down across from me and I heard them speaking North American English and discussing their travel plans. Even though they said nothing about where they were from, I just knew they were Canadian, just from the way they were talking.
So before I left I asked them where they from, and sure enough: Vancouver! Fancy that, meeting fellow Vancouverites in a Starbucks halfway around the world. Figures.
I stayed that night in a hostel for the first time.
My room only cost 14 euros. This is why:
While the room itself was miserable to sleep in, the place was clean, well-run, and great value for the money. It had an attached pub in which I spent a few hours before going to bed, reading my book and drinking 2.50-euro pints of Guiness. 2.50 euros!! It's going to kill me when I have to start paying Canadian booze prices again.
I did some research ahead of time and found a brand new Imax theatre that played English language movies. They were showing the film I was absolutely dying to see, There Will Be Blood, which had hadn't opened in the Netherlands yet, so I went to see it that night as well.
(Suffice to say, it was not only the best picture of the year, it's one of the best films I've ever seen in my life. I don't say such things lightly.)
At any rate, I'll have tons of things to say about the city in subsequent posts, so I'll cut myself off here. Stay tuned.
