First and foremost, I LOVED BERLIN, though I think it's the kind of city that you can only visit once, unlike Paris. Yea, Berlin has got to be my fav travel destination so far.
Touch down at Berlin Airport.
We had Germany soups for dinner at a restaurant (because everything else was expensive). I forgot the names of the soup.
After dinner, we dropped by a toy store located near our hostel. This toy store was quite small, but it was FILLED with toys!
The owner was very friendly too.
Ok, it's not that I am short, but our tour guide was REALLY TALL. We took a walking tour (not the free one), and I strongly recommend it to anyone going to Berlin. It's not worth going to berlin and not talking a tour because you won't enjoy Berlin unless you know the history behind it.
Fallen chair artpiece to commorate the war. Apparently during the war, some soldiers stomped into a certain lawyer's house one night and the lawyer tried to stop them and got killed. He fell over his chair and died and... viola. The scene was like that.
This is eastern berlin; the buildings in Eastern Berlin are mostly Brownish, while those in West Berlin are more modern looking and more colourful.
Bullet holes in the buildings still visible. Sometimes you'll also notice empty spaces in the middle of a row of houses; those houses were most likely bombed and beyond repair, so the gov just scrapped the whole building, leaving a gap.
World's largest Jewish synagogue. It is guarded 24/7 by policemen and is located in the red light district. So at night, you can see prostitues walking around and talking to policemen in front of the church. Sin, God and Death, all in one place. Nice.
Cool building. Berlin is SUCH an arty farty place! I loved the art scene; so spontaneous.
This is a building for budding artists. They only pay like 1,50 to rent a room here. And the building is filled with graffiti.
The courtyard.
Inside the building, you can open any door and if its not locked, you can enter any room you like. Yea, including toilet.
They even made use of the piano strings to make the fence. :D
Berlin's Green/Red man is another trademark. It came from Eastern Berlin, and it was designed so that little kids will wait patiently for the cute green man to appear before crossing the road.
Me gorging like a pig, so classic.
Anyway this is Currywurst, sausage with curry powder. Food is cheap in Berlin! I was shocked when I went to the supermarket; everything was cheaper than that in france! WHY WHY WHY did I not study in berlin instead!
The champs Elysee of Berlin.
The stereotype about Germans is that they are very strict and meticulous people. But numbering trees! gosh.
British Embassy. the Wierd blocks in the middle is supposed to resemble a SHIP. Well, it does not look anything like a ship to me. It is worth checking out the american embassy too; it's SWAMPED with policemen and you're not allowed to take pictures of the embassy, hence no pictures here.
Hotel Aldon, the ritz of berlin, situated right outside the Brandenburg Gate. It's where Michael Jackson did the baby-swinging thing, at the 3rd story balcony.
This is the interior of one of the buildings next to the Brandenburg Gates. Supposed to resemble a fish swimming.
Viola! Brandenburg Gates! And I just spoilt the picture for you by posing in front of it, ha ha ha!
Picture of how the Berlin Wall was built AROUND the Brandenburg gates.
The line paved with stones represents where the Berlin wall was. If you wanted to cross from East to West Berlin before 1990, you would have to: climb over one wall, run through guards, run through barbed wires, run through many many other obstacles, climb over another wall. IT was not easy at all. Some people made it, many others didn't.
Reigstag, the parliament house. It was burnt in 1933 before the elections, and after that the Reichstag Fire Decree was put in place to punish anyone who was against the nazis. Who burnt the parliament house is still a mystery.
Entry to go up was free, so of course we went. This is the view of the glass dome.
ME
Interior of the dome.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe aka Holocast memorial. Very controversial memorial which cost 25 mill euros to build. From the outside, the cement blocks look very short... but when you go in...
Yea, they are NOT short. Some thoughts that I felt as I walked through the memorial: the walkways are one-person wide, so you are forced to make a solo journey through it. It's also very easy to lose your friends in there (because of the sharp edges of the cement blocks).
Can hardly see much of the sky.
:) I made it out alive.
Checkpoint Charlie, the disneyland of paris. You've gotta pay these guys to take photos with them, and they are strippers by night.
I ABSOLUTELY love this signboard, i don't know why.
BERLIN WALL (there is only a small section remaining).
Kane on the West side of berlin, me on the East.
Decorated pieces of the wall. Lots of berlin people own a small section/piece of the wall. There were good and bad consequences of the fall of the wall, but ultimately I think capitalism works better than communism. One East Berliner I talked to told me that he was really happy when the wall came down because he could watch the lastest James Bond movie.
Hitler's baby photo. I belong to the "hilter is crazy" camp, but I still think he was incredibly eloquent.
This is a memorial of empty book shelves outside a library in berlin (Bebelplatz),and there is a plague beside this memorial that quotes a phrase from a German Writer:
"Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen"
(Where they burn books, they will also burn humans in the end). Very chilling parallels to what happened there in 1933, considering this phrase was written more than 100 years before the book burning event.
This was where Hilter and his wife of less than 40 hours commited suicide, 50m below in a bunker. Lots of people like to stomp/piss at this patch of grass.
:)
I love berlin!
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