Berlin

As you may have gathered, I am only visiting European cities that start with the letter B.

I have been to Berlin before, and was such a fan had to come back. Priscilla and I booked GBP15 tickets to berlin on a saturday morning. The thing with these tickets were the flights left at 6am, at the time we booked it made sense... you can check in remotely through the internet and then turn up an hour before the flight.

Now though you have to turn up 2hrs before, check in your back pack and wait ages till your flight leaves. This meant I had to get up at about 2am, and get the bus to Stansted (conveniently, Priscilla was at Luton).

Anyways... Priscilla and I didn't really sleep on Friday.

So of course the first thing we need to do was have breakie. We were staying at the hostel I stayed at last year ... such a friendly little hostel!!!! Plus, bargain breakie across the road.

We did a walking tour on Saturday morning all about Berlin during the cold war. This was what I came to Berlin for, to hear all about the history.


This is the British consulate in Berlin. Intersting looking building I guess. But the really interesting thing about this building is that the purple colour on this building is suppose to be the colour you would get if you mixed the colours of the the union jack together in the right proportions.







This is (apparently) the only visage of Lenin left in Berlin - potentially even Germany. Most of the communist symbols are gone. Another symbol of East Berlin is the Ampleman!!!! This is the cutest traffic man ever!!! West Berlin have the standard traffic man, and when they were reunited the Government started to replace the East Berlin traffic lights with normal (boring) traffic lights.

There were protests of course, after all, he is so adorable (for a traffic man), so he is still telling us when to walk in East Berlin... phew!

Here is Priscilla and I at the gorgeous Brandenburg Gate. The buildings in the square are necessarily bland in comparison (hence why I don't have any photos).

Interestingly, this square is also home to the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby off the window.



Priscilla and I scaling the Berlin wall. This is one part of the remaining bit of the Berlin wall which is unfenced. (Yep go figure)







The Berlin wall surrounded West Berlin and was built by the soviets/communits to stop East Germans from escaping to the West by West Berlin. Berlin sits in East Germany, and was the "thorn in Stalin's side". Because it was the capital of Germany, it was decided after WW2 to split it between the relevant parties, given its importance. So... the wall was actually two walls. In between the two walls was the "death strip" which was covered in carefully raked sand and patrolled by East Berlin guards.

Our tour guide spoke to us about the Stasi, the East German secret police. East Berlin is likely the most policed state ever. I can't remember the ratios, but there was some rediculously low number of people per secret police officer.

One bright ideas the Stasi had was to capture your scent. They use to haul you in for questioning, make you very nervous for a while, i.e. interogate you, and then the fabric on the chair was stored in a jar and kept with the information they had on you. Unbelievable

On Sunday, we did another walking tour, which was a more general one. I did this tour last year, but missed the second half... had to get on a train in Prague.

This is the site of book burning which took place under the Nazis. Interestingly, this square is in the middle of a university. Humboldt university.

THere is an underground memorial to the book burning (not this photo). There is a glass floor in the square and below that is empty bookshelves which could fit 20,000 books.

At the end of our tour on the Sunday, the tour guide (in the red top) told us about the circumstances surrounding the "fall of the wall" in 1989. Put simply, it was an accidental announcement made by an East German politician during a press conference.

He had some papers in front of him from a discussion some of the politicians had had in relation to giving East Germans unrestricted travel to the West. Turns out, this hadn't actually been officially agreed. A reporter asked him about whether the travel restrictions would be lessened, and he did not have an official briefing on this, but found these random notes, so said they would be lessened. Then the reporter asked when? Not knowing the answer, he said immediately. People then rushed down to the wall....


Here we are on a capital connect train from Gatwick airport on our way home after a lovely weekend away... next time will have to stay longer!