Ah Berlin, du bist wunderbar!

Our train trip to Berlin was uneventful and took about 10 hours. We actually got to see a lot more of Germany than we expected going through towns like Ulm, Stuttgard and Hamburg to name a few.

We got into Berlin at about 8pm and had a little more trouble finding our accommodation than we expected. It was called the JungendGaestehaus and was only about 500 meters from the train station. But it ended up being on a different road to the one their "address" is on so after a bit of searching, asking some taxi drivers and eventually a local, we managed to find the Hostel and checkin. The staff were very friendly and the checkin was easy and quick. The accommodation was alittle spartan but you can't expect much for 50 euros a night.

We woke up on Sunday with a huge Berlin agenda on the cards. First we had to hit the Post Office to send my skis off to Australia. We didn't end up getting this done and headed off for some sightseeing instead.

Our first stop, Checkpoint Charlie! Checkpoint Charlie is one of the most renowned locations of the Berlin Wall during the East/West Berlin separation. Here they had a whole block surrounded in billboards detailing the East/West separation and the history of Berlin from the end of World War 2 up until the reunification in 1990. This was interesting but the walk was about 5 kilometers from our hotel in cold weather and thick fog so I think we were a little disappointed and expecting something more (but the horrible weather probably killed the mood a bit as well). Shortly after, the sun came out with beautiful blue skies and the temperature jumped up nicely, this would prove to be a good omen for the remainder of the day.

As we continued to walk around the city, there were a number of billboards stating "Ah Berlin, du bist wunderbar!" hence the title of the blog =P This translates to "Ah Berlin, you are wonderful!". Mariya couldn't bring herself to agree =P

The next stop on our agenda was the Brandenburger Tor (aka the Brandenburg Gate). On our way to the Brandenburg Gate we stumbled across a very big Holocaust Memorial. We took a few photo's and the memorial was quite large. It was nice to see there was a lot of people wandering around the memorial. After spending some time here we moved on to the Brandenburg Gate. This was very impressive and one of Mariya's favorite things in Berlin. The Brandenburg Gate was one of 17 entrances to inner Berlin in the 1700's and a toll/tax point for anyone taking goods into inner Berlin. The Brandenburg Gate was enormous, it would have been atleast 10 meters high with huge pillars and many sculptures across the gates. It's a very impressive piece of architecture. As always, the photo's can be seen on Mariya's Facebook page.

After the Brandenburg Gate we decided to jump on the U-Bahn and head to Kurfensten'damm. This is a place Elizabeth told us about a number of times during our German lessons. The Public transport system in Berlin is outstanding and once again Australia has much to learn. We grabbed an above ground train one stop down the line and then an underground train out to a station called something like the Zoological Garten as this was the closest stop to the Ku'damm on the train we were on. When we got off the train here there were signs everywhere pointing to the Aquarium and the Zoo, that was it, Mariya was sold and all thought of the Ku'damm abandoned =P

So oft to the Berlin Zoo and Aquarium we went! We bought a Kombi-Ticket (which I ordered in German of course!) for both the Zoo and Aquarium and decided to do the Aquarium first. The Aquarium was enormous and had sealife, reptiles and amphibians from all over the world. After over an hour in the Aquarium we had to rush over to the Zoo as we were running out of time! The Zoo was also very large with a wide variety of wildlife from all over the globe. The big standouts for us being the huge (and noisy) lions, tigers, rhinos, monkeys, gorillas and elephants.

After the Zoo we had to head back into Central Berlin for our booked appointment at the Reichstag, Germany's new "Parliament House". You have to book 3 days in advance online to visit the Reichstag so we didn't want to miss this after making the booking. After a quick security check we headed into the Reichstag and up to the dome area. At the top of the Reichstag is a giant glass dome that you can walk up to have a wonderful view of Berlin. In the dome is the history of the Reichstag and Germany's parliament over the past few centuries. The view of Berlin was beautiful and the history was enlightening. Once we were finished in the dome we dropped in to the Reichstag Cafe for some German Waffles with cherries and cream.

We then headed back to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Berlin Central Station) to book our train to Brussels (in Belgium) for the next leg of our journey. We decided to grab dinner at the MacDonalds here, I had a "New York Special Burger" and Mariya had a "Bacon something Special". MacDonalds is really good in Germany and alot more like Hungry Jacks in Australia (or how our MacDonalds used to be like 15 years ago!).

As we were booked in for the first train out of Berlin in the morning (at 6:45am!) we decided to head home and have an early night.

While Berlin wasn't as exciting as we had hoped it was going to be some of the sights were certainly still nice, maybe our expectations were just a little too high. I don't think Mariya will be heading back to Berlin any time soon.