Day 9 - Fri Sep 1

The way trains work in Europe is that you buy a ticket or use a pass but you have to pay a bit extra to reserve a seat.  The reservation will indicate wagon number and seat number and the seats will indicate either with a slip of paper or a display above the seat from which cities the seat is reserved.  I paid the extra €3 for the reservation though the trains weren't super busy this time of year.

After a 6 hour train ride, I arrived at Ostbahnhof (East Train Station).  I got directions to get on the S-Bahn to the Generator hostel which was located right beside Landsberger Allee station on the ring line in an northwest of the city centre.  I wanted to do the pub crawl since it was a Friday night so the S-Bahn would be running all night since it was the weekend.  The Generator hostel was the largest in Berlin with over 900 beds and fairly new.  My only complaint was the small bathroom and small shower stalls in the common bathrooms.   To get to the city centre would require a train ticket (€2.10 short trip - 2hrs one way or €5.60 day pass - remember to validate your ticket!) and a 20 min S-Bahn ride with one transfer.

The pub crawl had a pickup from the Generator but met at Oranienburger Strasse, a street full of bars and restaurants and prostitutes wearing tight corsets.  I was in a quiet mood that night but met a friendly German couple from Cologne (Carson and Sarah) and had a fun night.

Day 11 - Sat Sep 2

The free walking tour had a pickup from the hostel and I met some Aussie and Welsh girls at our hostel.  The tour started at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Berlin and next to the Hotel Adlon - site of the Michael Jackson baby dangling incident.  We visited the main sites in the area including the Holocaust memorial, Hitler's bunker, Checkpoint Charlie, Bebelplatz, and ended up on Museum Island.  After the tour, we decided to check out the East Side Gallery on the Berlin Wall which is right by Ostbahnhof.  Surprisingly, even the artwork there was tagged with graffiti.  Since it was Saturday night, we all decided to do the pub crawl though it would be the second night in a row for me.  I met some American girls from California and partied with them most of the night.

Day 12 - Sun Sep 3

I decided to take the tour to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp since it was closed Mondays.  Most attractions including museums are closed Mondays.  I checked my guidebook afterwards and found out that museums were free first Sundays of the month so I should've done that instead and saved Sachsenhausen for Tuesday.  I was also told museums were free on Thurs nights.  The camp was located in a town called Oranienburg which is the last stop on the S1 line.  I had to purchase an extension to my AB day pass and it would've been cheaper if I originally bought an ABC day pass (€6) instead of just an AB one.  Sachsenhausen was a smaller labour camp mainly and not a death camp.  Though thousands died there, people weren't sent there specifically to be killed like in Auschwitz.  I found it rather sterile and I actually though that Anne Frank's house was more moving.  When I got back I did my laundry and had a quiet night.

Day 13 - Mon Sep 4

I headed over to Alexanderplatz in the morning to meet up for a free bike tour.  Alexanderplatz was under construction at the time so there wasn't much to see.  During the first half of the bike tour, we biked to the old Jewish synagogue, to Frerichenstrasse station, along scenic bike paths beside the Spree river to the brand new Hauptbahnhof, to the Reichstag and then to a beer garden in the Tiergarten.  I tried a Berliner Weisse which was a woodruff syrup flavoured beer only available in Berlin.  In the afternoon, there was some overlap with the walking tour as we visited briefly the places I saw the previous day.   After the tour, I headed over to the Topography of Terrors (free) which was at the site of the former Gestapo headquarters.  There was an exhibit on the war crimes trials in Nuremburg but the main exhibit was all in German (needed to rent an audioguide).  Next, I headed back to the Reichstag and since the lineup wasn't too bad, I waited to go inside (free).  I thought we would be given a tour of the bundestag (parliament) but the lineup was just to go to the roof and the glass dome on top.  There was some history on the building inside but the views were great and worth the wait.  The symbolism of the modern glass dome above the parliament represents that the people are at the top and the government is supposed to serve the people.  If the politicians ever forget that fact, all they have to do is look up (at all the tourists).  In front of the Reichstag was an empty dirt park but it recently was the site of a mini Olympic stadium fan park during the World Cup.

Day 14 - Tue Sep 5

In the morning, I headed over to Hauptbahnhof to buy my train ticket to Prague (€57).  The station was just recently renovated and very impressive.  I headed over to Zoologischer Garten to check out Kasier Wilhelm Gedachtnis Kirche which was the bombed out church that was not repaired and then over to Siegessaule (Victory Column) at Tiergarten (€2?).  Next, I headed off to the Holocaust Memorial again to visit the information centre (free), over to Checkpoint Charlie to read about the history of the Berlin wall, and then over Museum Island to see the Pergammon Museum.  All the museums were undergoing renovation so only a few were open and some exhibits had been relocated.  Entry was €10 but you could buy a 3-day museum pass for €15 which I did.  This allowed me to see the Altes Museum which had Egyptian artifacts.  In the evening, I did the pub crawl one more night but this time with a big group of Irish guys from the hostel.  Can't recall much of the last bar we visited but I managed to get a taxi back to the hostel (€9?).

Day 15 - Wed Sep 6

My last day in Berlin I was hung over again.  Since I still had 2 days on my museum pass, I visited the Alte National gallerie and the Deutscher Dom.  The Deutscher Dom was free anyway and had an exhibit on the history of the German government but it was all in German and there was no view from the top so it was a bit disappointing.  I headed over to check out Potsdamer Platz and then Nordbahnhof to check out a preserved section of the Berlin Wall including the death strip.  The wall section was graffiti free though it looked like a continuous effort to keep it that way.  It was another quiet night in the evening as I watched Germany destroy the small country of San Marino 13-0 in a Euro Cup qualifying match.

Berlin Notes

As I was told, the history of the widespread graffiti in Berlin may be because of the wall.  The wall was built entirely inside East Berlin territory to avoid disputes that might have occured if it was built right on the boundary.  Because of this fact, the police didn't have jurisdiction if they caught someone graffiting the wall which led to graffiti being commonplace on the western side.  Though they keep the graffiti off the failry new S-Bahn trains, every window is scratched and tagged.

Costs were relatively low in Berlin.  You could easily find a Bratwurst in a bun, slice of pizza or donair kebab for €2-3.  McDonald's meals are about €4 (with a €1 menu as well) and a bottle of coke €1-2.  Museums were a good choice for free washrooms (usually located outside the paid area).

Berlin has a great transit system with U-Bahn, S-Bahn, trams and buses.  I never had to take a tram or bus.  Ticket inspectors on the S-Bahn are plainclothed and I was probably checked about 50% of the time.  You need to remember to both buy and validate your ticket.

I could get by with my couple words in German though most people understood English.  I need to add another essential word to learn in foreign countries other than hello and thank you.  Excuse me is required especially when traveling on crowded trains which translates to Entschuldigen (ent-SHOOL-de-gen) in German.  I also heard "ausgang links" on the train after every stop.  It took me a while for me to figure out it means to exit left.  They also posted the weather forecast every morning in the elevator.  I thought it was going to rain everday until I realized "wetter" translates to weather.

Next Part 3: Prague

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