In Berlin

Berlin. I didn't really know what to expect from Berlin. Would it have classicaly elaborate buildings, as it is in Europe, or would it stand out from the typical European architecture with it's own bold German individuality? Would it be super clean with sleek modern buildings reflecting a new forward looking economy, or would there be dismal reminders of its schizophrenic cold war era? Well, a bit of everything really. It would be more interesting if it was heavily biased towards one of the options. If it's any consolation, I was surprised how french-looking a lot of the buildings looked; maybe that is more of a "European" look, but I had really expected berlin to be something independent, individual. Instead, parts of it looked like a humourless French city. Still, that was no comment on the people, the culture or anything, just my impression of the general buildings.

For the first time this trip, I decided to use public transport - you can get a day ticket to get you in and out of Berlin which will pay for all public transport as well. I originally wanter to try to walk everywhere in an attempt to see all of Berlin - I'm glad that a couple of Dutch guys talked me out of it. So, I arrived at Zoo Station in Berlin disappointed to find that the platforms were not lined with cages of lions and multicoloured birds. There is a zoo nearby, that's all - a bit of premeditated false advertising, if you ask me. They could a least have had a monkey at the signals, or something. As a side note, apparently they house a popular pandabear called 'Knut'. I believe he wears an fcuk t-shirt.

Anyway, in order to see as much as possible in one day, I first head Northwest to the Charlottenburg palace. The actual palace extends to the left and right, but it is unviewable because of the trees. However, the palace is not very deep, only really a line of rooms; maybe they were working on the principle of "make yourself look big". I have no experience of Russian architecture, but to me it looked as if it would be at home in Moscow; perhaps this was the seed in my head of the idea of Berlin being a colder, more plain version of Paris.

As you'd expect, there are lots of sights relating to WW2 in Berlin - perhaps a bit too many: it's a bit like they're going out of their way to remember the war and how bad Hitler was, and they really need to show everyone with public displays. Then again, I guess WW2 is a significant jigsaw piece into how they now are. Anyway, references to WW2 start with a preserved bombed-out church next to zoo station, which I thought was awesome. It's difficult to imagine what the scale of WW2 bombing was - how big the explosions, how much damage they do, what the raids were like and so on; the church is a good clue to bring the severity into focus.

To plug up the piety hole left by a dead church, they built another next to it (to be honest a bit too next to it) which is plain ugly.

Inside, all is forgiven.

It's like being in the christian version of the Matrix. (What happens if we actually are eh? eh? didn't think about that now, did you?) But really couldn't they have done soehing with the exterior? put spikes on it or buttresses or something? Covering it it tinsel would have been better than that.

So, given that I had an all day ticket, I followed some advice from the dutch duo and took a bus, a normal bus which happens to go past quite a few important buildings. I think it was 90. or maybe 1. could have been the 60. I've taken so many busses since then I can't remember sorry. it should be obvious anyway. First port of call - the Siegessäule (Victory Column) in the centre of the Tiergarten park. In the end, I didn't go around the Tiergarten because I was short on time; I assume it's quite nice, you don't get t see much of it from the road as there are too many trees. The lack of green in my diet of Berlin might have left me with a more constipated option of Berlin.

I got to the column, and there was a new zealand guy with lots of hair doing a bicycle tour - I think it was called the flat tyre tour - so I listened in. It was a good description - I might go for that next time I visit. He basically said that when Bismark united the Germans they celebrated by invading France. Not quite - they stopped off at Denmark and the Netherlands before then for some pre-war munchies. After they'd won that they made a column surrounded with cannons captured from the wars - the bottom row are German cannons. And the top row are Danish - they look to be made out of rubber balls - no wonder they lost. Then they put a big golden woman on top pointing at Paris to taunt them. No wonder the French hated them - way to go at being popular, Germany. After the end of the second world war, the French wanter the column taken down but the British stopped them. No wonder the French hate the British.

This is some palace.

This is an interesting building.

Onto the Reichstag! I really like the Reichstag. Bold, purposeful, classical solid. It makes you think the Government there would be hard as nails, and honest. Good design. The dome is now a crystal one - perfect for giving it a modern twist with emphasis on technology and the future. Well done. There's also a big swathe of grass in front so you can actually see it, and there are quite a few people that go and sit on the grass out side. Could you imagine that in your country? The grass makes the the building friendly, almost. Still it's just a building that I happen to like. you'll most likely be disappointed.

Down the road is the Brandenburg gate. Really, it seems, just a big plinth on pillars. I guess it's got acres of history and pride associated with it, and if you're German, and you know all about that stuff and it makes you all flushed inside, then it's a really great place to go. But for me, slightly disappointing. Maybe I was expecting it to be bigger. It's very crowded with tourists behaving like kids because they're exited to be there and don't really want to acknowledge that it is just a plinth on pillars. Lots of tourists walking through an arch, and then, surprised that they feel no different, walking back again incase something special happens. Still, quite iconic with a big statue on top, a must-see, I guess. The history behind the gate is what powers the appeal, more than anything.

Just adjacent to that a holocaust memorial, probably the best I've seen. lots of sombre monoliths arise from the ground in a huge square; as you travel to the centre the monoliths get higher but the ground also dips so they get bigger faster, swallowing you up into a quiet imposing, claustrophobic sea of emotionless granite. That is, if there weren't loads of fucking tourist teenagers running around and treating it like a maze. And also, the blocks are all aligned, which means you can always see out; I guess it would be a muggers paradise if they didn't do that.

Down the street is the Gendarmen markt, a square with a pair of twin churches on them. It would have been a lot more spectacular without the bilding site in the middle; still, I got to go up to the top of the Franzosischer Dom with good views and a bunch of bells which looks like the underside of a rocket from the bottom of the church.

I was hungry by now, so I headed down to curry 36, supposedly the best place for currywurst in the city. Curry wurst are sausages with a mild curry flavour - I had expected them to be strongly flavoured and hot, but they were neither. still, very nice; fries with paprika on them were a nice touch.

On the way, I passed by checkpoint charlie, the famous gate between east and west germany during the cold war. The booth still remains and there is a museum nearby and a weird portrait of a soviet officer hanging over it, there must be some significance in it. Again packed with tourists. Two men dressed in American and (I think) british uniforms who were acting a bit giggly at the attention they were receiving, posing with groups of japanese girls with glee. bastards. only joking. I don't know what I was expecting from checkpoint charlie; I think I was a bit disappointed.

Due to its proximity, I took a trip to the TOPOGRAPHY - OF - TERROR, the headquaters of the gestapo. It's amazing how the gestapo conducted such a fearsome campaign of terror and surveillance from a building site. There is a path nearby with many story boards describing the rise and fall of the gestapo, but it is really a glorified web page. If a tour offers a guide around the museum of terror, I would think twice about going. Incidentally, it was here I first encountered the begging roma of Berlin. I did not think much about it, other than it was strange for a gypsy to be in the centre of Berlin. However, I was to find the Dom was crawling with them begging for money, and playing the accordion comically poorly. They are multilingual in asking for money, too: why don't they get jobs as translators?

Back towards the Dom I popped into babels platz, where the nazi book burnings took place. There is a clever monument of a glass plate in the floor with an empty white room below containing empty book shelves; it would have been a lot more poignant if they weren't erecting a fucking stage over the top of it.

Past some important looking buildings lies the Dom, the chunky cathedral of Berlin. For me, who is used to cathedrals with a long aisle and trencepts, the Dom seemed a bit squashed up; a bit like a bulldog. Inside it was vast and impressive vertically, but this only seemed to expose it's small floor space. The decoration was quite regal for a protestant church, gold leaf and classically decorated panels.

Quite a few pages of the guide were dedicated to museums in the area, so I decided to go to one - I'm glad I did. I decided to go to the Pergamon Museum. It is very unusual for me to be able to take pictures in museums, so, given the opportunity, I went about logging everything. The centre pieces of the museum are three huge exhibits: a massive altar from greece; a gateway to a market from.. er.. well, it was Roman; and a street from Babylon with a gate at the end. It's worth going to see them just for their size.

The rest of the museum is filled with other quite large and interesting stuff including a room from a house in turkey (I think). The doors were tiny. I'm a small guy, but the people that inhabited these quaters must have been under 4 ft tall. If they were that small, how big must the rest of the huge ancient edifices have seemed?

The rest is really my trip back to the station. There is a huge spike with a blob on it it Alexander Platz which contains a restaurant, but i didn't have time. Maybe next visit.

I also visited an "old quater" nearby where supposedly they are trying to recreate the town a couple of hundred years agon, but it seemed to me to be a few artsy crafty shops getting together and putting old-looking signs outside their shops.

On the way back, I briefly visited potsdamer platz named after my previous blog, as Hitlers bunker is supposed to be nearby. I was quite interested, but the location is unmarked and there are no signs. It seems strange that this site has been forgotten by the berliners.

In Berlin

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