Our last day in Berlin… things had flown by so quickly. We felt like we had both been here for ages and only just arrived. So today was a case of filling in some gaps before saying goodbye and heading out of town tomorrow.

My previous post, detailing our cycling trip around the city, hinted at some of the things we were getting up to. Our first destination had been booked before we left since we needed to meet the necessarily security checks and pre-reqs. Yep, it was off to visit the German parliament.

We got to the Reichstag and duly passed through the strict security checks. Outside of dropping off backpacks into lockers at museums, we had had to deal with very little security to speak of our whole time in Berlin. Unlike Paris where we had checks even going into supermarkets, it was nice to be somewhere where we weren’t continually emptying pockets and bags.

 

 

After going through, it was into the building proper. Security was tight as our small group went through one security checkpoint after the next, but eventually we were up in the elevator to the huge glassed dome.

 

 

At this point the general public were allowed to wander unaccompanied. With audio guide hand, we wandered about the rooftop and up the screw thread path around the inside of the dome.

The dome offered great views over the Berlin cityscape. The building itself was as much of a focal point as the city views outside. The glass dome, the curling path, the giant sunshade… it was very impressive. At the top was actually a 10m open hole, explaining why the inside of the dome was so chilly. Apparently when it rains and snows it all funnels down through a chute and conveniently out of sight.

 

 

From the top you could peer all the way down and see into the actual rooms of parliament. The whole thing is designed to get maximum natural sunlight into the room, and even has the giant sunshade if it is a bit bright. Pretty clever! By that point it had been an hour or so,  so it was time to wander back down, keep moving and move on to more Berlin.

 

 

Our next destination was the Jewish memorial we had visited yesterday. On our way we passed a memorial to some that had fallen during the days of the wall and in attempts to escape the east. As Kate remarked on seeing the flowers that these people would be the parents, uncles and aunts, or people that continue to live in Berlin. So surreal to think about how recent it all really is.

 

 

 

Back past the Brandenburg Gate one last time and we were at the memorial. We spent a bit more time to just soak it all up and wander through the concrete blocks. At every angle it appeared different. It really is a great memorial as also shown by the many people wandering about.

Rather than go into the attached museum, we decided to keep walking and head to the one last museum we had on our list, the Topographies of Terror. We were not expecting a good time, but it was one we wanted to visit.

 

 

 

 

On our way we saw a big Ampelmann in a small park. Who is Ampelmann I hear you ask? He is the ubiquitous red and green man that greets you at every set of traffic lights in Berlin. I did a quick bit of reading and it turns out that he is a beloved remnant of East Germany… so much so that when they started changing the crossing sign to a more traditional figure in the early 2000’s, public outcry was such that they returned Ampelmann to his former glory. Every now and then we would see an older set of traffic lights with a more typical red and green signal, but in most cases our cue to cross the street was the green silhouette of Ampelmann. So we wouldn’t miss him to much we got some magnets to adorn our fridge from a nearby store.

 

 

 

In no time we reached the museum. As mentioned yesterday it was on the site of the former Gestapo and part of the wall, and detailed the horrors of the early to mid parts of the 20th century. In full detail, and with many many photos and documents, it described the rise to power of the Hitler and the atrocities. It was hard work. Amazingly important it must be said, but every now and then you would see a heartbreaking or gut punching photo that made it all hit home.

It was mid afternoon and Kate was flagging. A busy week was taking its toll. I only had one more place I wanted to visit before we left, the most famous part of the wall still standing. So back on to the S-Bahn, and off to Ostbahnhopf station to visit the East Side Gallery.

 

 

The East Side Gallery is a 2km stretch of the wall that has been turned in to a perpetual gallery of street art. Both side of the wall are covered in colourful paint. One side is much more of a free-for-all, that seems to be graffiti’ed by people on a regular occasion. The other side appear to be a more regulated side, with fencing covering part of it and more “legitimate” works done.

 

 

Strolling along checking out the works, it was interesting to see what was adorning the wall. In many respects it was not as amazing as I expected, given the amount of people that visit and how (in)famous it now is. Two main works stood out among them all.

 

 

The first was the faces of Thierry Noir, that I wrote about on our first day. A dozen bright faces covered one early stretch of the wall and for me were easily the highlight. They were bright and distinct and really gave it some character.

 

 

The other artwork is one that you also see advertised around Berlin, a great representation of a famous photo showing Brezhnev and Honecker in a warmer than usual greeting. When you see the original photos it is crazy to see that the painting is not really an exaggeration at all! It was easily the best piece on the wall.

The rest were fairly generic pieces of street art that were OK, but not too awe-inspiring. Great to see, and especially to see more of the wall, but I would love to see a more curated aspect to the “gallery”.

The sun was setting as I got back to the hotel. Kate was well rested so given we had a big day of travelling the next day we opted for one more quick trip out to finish they day ice and early. What did we do? Dinner at a Christmas market obviously!

 

 

We went back to a market at Alexanderplatz that we had not really visited properly. I couldn’t help but finish my visit to Berlin with a Bratwurst, a Gluhwein, and a chocolate pretzel as big as my head.

Goodbye Berlin… I’ll miss you heaps.

 

We had been in Berlin for about 5 days or so and I was still having a little trouble wrapping my head around the layout of the city. That’s what happens when you mostly use the S and U Bahn to get about. So I was super excited for today’s activity… seeing Berlin on bike.

We had the Berlin Fat Bike tours recommended to us and as you can expect I was keen to spend a day on a bike exploring the city. So at mid-morning we headed to Alexanderplatz to meet up with the Fat Bike crew.

 

 

Seems these are pretty popular as there ended up being about 50 people that were split up across 4 groups to spend 4+ hours exploring the city. Walid, an ex-pat Brit, was our guide and once we had broken up into our groups got a quick intro. It turned out that the group needed someone to take on a key role in the group. Ass man. Yep. Someone to be designated at the back of the group that our leader could keep an eye on to know he had the whole group. Thanks to my yellow beanie, I decided to offer to take the role. Why not?

So with my trusty steed, “Black Sabbath” (all the bikes were given random names related to no consistent theme… Kate had “Ngorongoro Crater”), off we went.

While we were going to be visiting some places we had already been to, the idea of the tour was to understand the city, its geography and history, better. For me, it was also just about seeing a city by bike.

Ah, the liberation of riding without a helmet! Don’t get me wrong… I wouldn’t do it at home. But there is something very nice about the opportunity to ride with the wind through the hair (or the beanie as it were).

 

 

From Alexanderplatz we headed to nearby Museum Island, where we were given a rundown of the history of the island as well as the Berliner Dom, the big church also located on the island. It was now that Walid put his finger on one of the things that makes Berlin quite compelling… that while we seem to be looking at buildings centuries old, the reality is most things are only a few decades of age, rebuilt to resemble their destroyed counterparts. So that poses a fascinating question of whether you rebuild to resemble the past or forge a new direction. Berlin indeed seems to have a foot in both camps, wrestling with the outcomes of the past half century.

 

 

Next was one of the courtyards of Humbolt University, home to many many Nobel prize winners (including one Albert Einstein). It was here that was one of the more notorious moments in Berlin history, a mass burning of approximately 20,000 books. To recognise this, the courtyard is home to a very subtle memorial… a window down into an empty library. If you didn’t know it was there you would likely walk over the top. Seems Berlin is full of memorials, many subtle in nature like this.

 

 

We stopped by Checkpoint Charlie next. It was much busier than the previous night and bustling with tourists and faux soldiers.

 

 

After a quick selfie with one of the ubiquitous Berlin bears, we hit the road again.

 

 

Just nearby were two remnants from the past decades. The first was a 200m stretch of the Berlin Wall, part of the Topographies of Terror museum. What makes this museum quite amazing is that it is located on the site of the Gestapo buildings, which apparently was not know for sure until relatively recently. It was suspected but not full known, which made the stretch of wall and nearby government buildings all the more spooky. We would be revisiting this museum in the next day or so.

 

 

Also close down a nondescript street was the last remaining guard tower from the Wall era. No sign, plaque,or anything. Just a lonely tower still standing. No one else was around, which I found fascinating that it was still standing and not part of the tourist trail. Super haunting.

 

 

Speaking of haunting, we also visited an even more chilling location, that you would only know its history from one sign in the middle of a footpath in a street full of apartments. Below our feet was the infamous Fuhrerbunker, where Hitler bunkered down and eventually committed suicide. Walid explained why only a simple sign existed, that after attempting to destroy it unsuccessfully, the Berlin government did not want to make the bunker a memorial, so just filled it up and left it at that. Given the cities acknowledgement of everything else, I think this was probably for the best.

 

 

Next up was something else haunting but for all different reasons, the memorial for the fallen Jews. This is one that description really doesn’t do it justice. Thousands of concrete blocks of varying heights, put together in a really disorienting manner for the visitors wandering between them. With an undulating ground beneath your feet, wandering through them means you go from seeing above, surrounded by the blocks, to being in the middle, towered over by the concrete.

 

 

 

We only had 10 minutes to wander through but we knew we would have to return.

 

 

The day was quickly approaching lunchtime, and with a quick burn past the Brandenburg Gate, it was into the Tiergarten, the massive parkland in the centre of Berlin. Hunting grounds for the previous aristocracy it is now home to cyclists and beer gardens and the towering Victory Column at its centre.

 

 

It was now it was really hitting home how different Berlin was to when I first visited all those years ago. Last time, also in mid December, this park was covered in a foot of snow. Today… nothing at all. I mentioned this to Walid, and he too was totally thrown by the fact there was no snow in Berlin. By now they expected the city to be covered. While it made getting around nice and easy, I have to say I was really disappointed not to encounter a snowy Berlin with white gardens and Christmas markets.

 

 

After riding by the Victoria perched on her Victory column, we reached a beer garden nestled in the gardens for some lunch and a brew. Mmmm…. a super tasty winter salad and a big beer and I was filled with sustenance for the rest of ride.

 

 

Which was not much actually. It was approaching 3pm and the light was starting to dim. From the garden we stopped by the Reichstag, the main government building in the city and home to the German parliament. The building is home to the well known huge glass dome that looks out over Berlin. We held tickets to visit the next morning so the fleeting visit in the fading light was OK.

 

 

And with that, our day on the bikes came to an end. Almost 5 hours of freewheeling around Berlin was so much fun, and Walid was an excellent guide.I finally felt all the pieces of Berlin were coming together.

Kate and I were pretty tired by our day of freewheeling, so decided that we didn’t need to do too much more for the day. But we were right next to the TV tower, so we thought now would be a good chance to head up and gaze out over Berlin as the sun was fading. We had a better idea of the layout of the city, so once we oriented ourselves we could spy all the different landmarks.

 

 

 

Were we done yet? Well, since we were next to a couple of Christmas markets, how could we not pop in for a bit?!

 

 

Rather than another bratwurst I opted for a tasty roast pork roll. I could eat at these markets for ever.

With full bellies, we wandered back past the TV tower, on the S-Bahn to the hotel and a well earned nights sleep.

 

Before leaving home, I always check up what gigs and sport might be happening where I’m travelling to. The first thing I thought when we planned Berlin was “Bundesliga!”… i.e the national German Football competition. But when I looked I didn’t see any games in Berlin. Doh!

Well, as it turned out I was all wrong. Lucky for me! As we made our way about on our first day I found out that Herta Berlin were indeed playing and at home on Sunday afternoon no less! Win!

But before we get to that, I will fill in the first part of our Sunday. We had done part of Museum Island, but still had a number of museums to visit. We were starting to be a bit museum’ed out, but there was one main one that we were keen to visit, so we headed off to visit.

 

 

I finally took a picture of the giant hand just outside of hotel (and outside our window). It is very cool but in some respects I thought we’d be seeing much more street art around the city than we had been. Maybe I just wasn’t looking in the right locations.

 

 

So in no time we were at Museum Island. First one we popped into was the Bode Museum. This was home to a strange collection, including sculpture and coins. More so than the Neues museum which we had visited earlier, this museum seemed pretty lacking. We weren’t sure if it was because we had seen so much amazing stuff in Paris, or if indeed the collection just wasn’t amazing, but we had the real sense that the past century in Berlin had meant that the collection was just a shadow of what it used to be.

 

 

As a result we worked through a good portion of the museum fairly quickly and then hightailed it to the main one we wanted to visit.

The Pergamon Museum is probably the highlight of Museum Island. This museum is home to a number of massive reconstructed architectural works, including the Pergamon Altar. Sadly, with all the renovations going on on Museum Island, the Pergamon was in a state with about half of the museum closed. Sadly, that meant the Pergamon Altar was off limits (until 2019!).

We could however get to see their two other most significant pieces, the Ishtar Gate and the Market Gate of Miletus.

 

 

The Ishtar Gate was a gate to the inner city of Babylon, and was excavated in the early 20th century and reconstructed here in the Pergamon. And it was HUGE. Something the size of the Brandenburg Gate inside a museum!

 

 

The blue of the tiles was incredible. To think it is literally 1000’s of years old is hard to comprehend. The colour of the tiles was just like they were made yesterday.

On the other side of the Ishtar Gate was another reconstruction, this time the Market Gate of Miletus. And this was even bigger!

 

 

Not quite as old as the Ishtar Gate (this being only just under 2000 years old), this marble gate was also excavated in the early 1900’s, but it has a bit more of a chequered past. This was in many pieces and while it has been kept as original as possible, there are some pieces that are not original. But when something is that old (and was also damaged during WW2) you can cut them some slack.

Much of the rest of the museum was closed so we decided to head off. Rather than visit the remaining couple of museums on Museum Island, we decided to visit the German History Museum. We both felt we had some gaps in our understanding of everything that had taken place, so we decided to bone up on that part of our history.

 

 

This museum as pretty great actually. It was split into two parts… basically everything pre WW1 and then everything up to the fall of the wall.

I enjoyed this quite a bit more than the museums on Museum Island in many ways. This seemed like a huge and important collection that had not suffered like the others had. While the first part was interesting, I found the more recent history fascinating.

 

 

 

 

It seemed to strike a balance between acknowledging what had taken place in the first half of the 1900’s, while not showing off too much. I especially found it interesting to see that they had experienced their own case of the Zimbabwe dollar… the Deutsche Mark reached one trillion before it was devalued back to just one! Not sure I will ever see a one trillion dollar note again.

We spent a good couple of hours in there before it was time for Kate and I to part company for a few hours. Yep, it was Bundesliga time!

Local team Herta Berlin were scheduled to play Mainz 05, out at the Olympiastadion. This was super exciting. Not only would it be my first Bundesliga game, but also a trip to the old Olympic Stadium, built for the 1936 olympics.

 

 

 

On arriving I was greeted by a different type of stadium to what I expected. I guess I didn’t know what to expect but not sure this was it! Unlike most other stadiums I had visited around the world, this was very bare bones… much more like a colosseum than a modern sports stadium. By this I mean that the entry to the stadium is via a main security gate into which you enter the stadium grounds. The stadium itself has no facilities in it! It is literally just basic stairways and seating, where stairs downward took you to the ground level seating and stairs up into the top tier. A super efficient way to hold 75,000 people!

It meant that getting in and out of the stadium was super quick and easy. It also meant that food vendors were all around the outside of the stadium, so I could bratwurst and pretzel it up nice and easy 🙂

 

 

 

Outside the stadium were some reminders of the original purpose of the ground. The Olympic Rings still presided over the ground, while an Olympic Bell stood in the ground. Apparently the bell tower was the only thing destroyed during the war, with the crack in the bell the only scar on show.

 

 

It was getting close to kick off so I went inside the stadium. There was a crowd of about 50,000 amassed for the game and the active supporter end was going crazy! It was continual songs and chanting and it was deafening in the stadium. Ah, just like back at home with my beloved Melbourne Victory and the north end. It felt like home 🙂

Before the game kicked off, the crowd burst into song (just like we have embraced Stand By Me back at home for Victory games). This was VERY strange though. I couldn’t understand the words, but the tune was “Sailing” by Rod Stewart! How bizarre! (*Note, I have since read up and found out it is their Herta Berlin hymn called “Nur Nach Hause”. I still need to find out why Rod Stweart!).

Then the whistle blew and we were off!

I would love to say it was one of the best games I had ever been to, but it was just a really good, solid game. It lacked the thrills as Herta Berlin never really let Mainz get a look in. It was 1-0 at half time and could easily have been more. Berlin just dominated the game.

 

 

The second half was the same story… controlled by Berlin from the kick off, and another well executed goal meant 2-0 was the result. It should have been 3-0 thanks to a wrongly called offside (I was with the locals on that one), but everyone was happy in the stadium. While I say it was just an alright game, it was magic to see 2 goals scored and see the passionate Berliner fans loving it. I was up out of my seat as well… this is what the world game is all about. I got to experience a crazy happy crowd in (arguably) the biggest football league in the world. Totally awesome.

 

 

Everyone started to exit the ground and head back on the train. How awesome it was to be surrounded by all the happy fans in good spirits (as well as a stadium that takes 1 minute to get out of and a train that arrives every few minutes).

It was well dark by this point when I got back to the hotel. Kate had been kicking back and was keen to get out and about a bit. So without further adieu, I was back out the door!

Being after 6pm on a Sunday our choices were partly limited (well, we had many Christmas markets still!), but we decided to head to Checkpoint Charlie to visit the museum there.

 

 

 

 

 

Most people know about this infamous checkpoint between East and West Berlin, so there is not too much need to talk about it in much detail. Today it still has a hut set up that is perpetually manned by dressed “guards” waiting for tourist photos, and there is a good collection of outdoor information about the decades when the wall was up.

The museum was open so we decided to pay it a visit. I had been 15 years earlier, and it is no exaggeration to say that it looked as though the museum had not been changed at all in that time. Everything looked as though it probably hadn’t changed in decades.

 

 

 

 

It is an absolutely fascinating museum. The stories of escape are amazing and it actually houses a really impressive collection of escape objects, such as cars, suitcases, light aircraft and all kinds of crazy things. This is incredible to see. If only they could find the time and money to update the displays and make it a bit more modern, it could be a world-class presentation of a fascinating part of history. As it stands it is still fascinating, just pretty rough around the edges. But I guess that might be the point in a way.

It actually took us a bit of time to make our way around, taking our time to read all the incredible stories (some of which seemed straight out of spy or Bond novels). It was getting late, so on to the U-Bahn it was and back to the hotel to call it a day.