Ah Berlin, du bist Wunderbar….nicht!!!!

Nathan covered off on our final week in St Anton and I don’t feel the need to add anything to his blog J

I was very sad to be leaving St Anton but on the other hand I was excited to finally be visiting all the places I had only ever heard or read about and our first stop was going to be Berlin!

The train trip was pleasant as we had a reserved cabin with 6 seats and an older couple were the only ones sharing with us until Frankfurt.  At Frankfurt they left and then Nathan and I were adopted by a couple of young girls, Clara and Sophie (maybe 4 and 2), travelling with their mother.  They took to us very fast and kept offering to share their fruit and lollies.  We ended up sharing all of our food, playing card games and chatting with their Mum as the interpreter.

We arrived at Berlin HBF at about 8.30pm and I was immediately overwhelmed!  This train station looks about the same size as Brisbane Airport!  It was 5 stories high, there were 100’s of shops and there were trains arriving and leaving from the Subway above us and the Underground below us!  We checked our directions and finally found the correct exit then tried to get a cab but it seems that our destination was too close for the cabbie so all we got was directions.  Walking in a strange city at night with all our luggage and vague directions was disconcerting but I didn’t feel uncomfortable until we had to turn down a dark sidestreet!  The building number we were looking for was nowhere to be found and I was starting to get worried.  A cab was at the kerb so I quickly asked him for more directions and strangely, even though we were on the right street, he didn’t know the building we were looking for.  Finally a local knew what we were looking for and gave us specific instructions on how to get there.  What a relief to finally walk in the door and check in!!!

The room was very basic but the shower was amazing!  Scalding hot water and nice shower gel made the cares of the day melt away and I think I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow!  Sadly the sleep didn’t last long as there seemed to be a major incident across the road that required police and other emergency services to attend and then stay for hours with all of their lights flashing and our curtains did nothing to block it out!

Waking up the next morning to thick fog and wet cold I really wasn’t in the mood to go sightseeing but we needed to try and find a post office to send Nathan’s skis home as lugging them around was going to be difficult.

The saga of the skis is not a story I will tell right now….I may laugh one day but today is not that day…but when you walk up to an information booth and ask for directions to a post office and the man behind the counter yells “VAS!!??  VAS DO YOU VANT!!???” you know it’s not off to a good start L

Nathan is doing details on our day in Berlin so I won’t go into details, all I will say is that the Berlin I saw was not what I was expecting….I was overwhelmed with the filth, garbage everywhere, almost every surface (including the remains of the wall) covered in graffiti, spit EVERYWHERE and literally thousands of cigarette butts. 

It was hard to reconcile the image I had in my head of a place filled with history and the reality that no one seemed to care about preserving this.

The Brandenburg Gate was truly spectacular and lifted my mood, at least there was an effort made to maintain the area surrounding and this was the first thing that wasn’t covered in graffiti!

The train system is amazing and we decided to go to the Ku’Dam to take photo’s (anyone that knows about our German lessons will know why) but on the way we spotted the station for the Berlin Zoo and Aquarium!

We spent a couple of pleasant hours here before rushing off to catch another train to take us to the Reichstag where we had booked a viewing of the dome for 3.15.  Again, this was very impressive and the photo’s dating back to the early 1900’s told the history of German politics beautifully.

A quick stop at the café as we hadn’t eaten all day completed the visit.

Heading back to the Berlin HBF I decided that I didn’t want to spend another day in Berlin so we went and booked our tickets for the next day to travel to Brussels.