On Saturday we had a city sightseeing tour in Berlin.
We met each other at 2 in the hostel's lobby in order to catch the bus. Yeah, the plan was to do the city tour by bus.. Then we found out that the bus won't start (broken bus? heard before? check our Oktoberfest post) and we need to do it by walking :D We walked to the Alexanderplatz U-bahn station planning to take a metro to Potsdamer Platz, where the guide would be waiting for us. Here in Germany nobody really ever checks tickets in the public transportation so we did not buy them. Of course (!!!!!!) the ticket inspector came right away to check our tickets, which we didn't have... Luckily he was pretty nice and gave us only one fine of 40 € when he could have given it to all 25 of us.. After that we bought tickets: a 5-person group ticket for one day cost 16,20 €.
We made it to Potsdamer Platz and found our guide. We started our tour by walking to the Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe through Tiergarten (a huge park).
On our way to the Holocaust memorial we stopped by a smaller memorial to the murdered homosexuals during the holocaust. The memorial was a big "stone" and inside it was a video of kissing homosexuals.
Then we arrived to the Holocaust memorial! It was huge! The guide told us that it is bigger than two soccer fields together. And even though the designer of the memorial didn't want to have any symbolism in the memorial and there were no signs or anything telling it is a memorial, it was impressive. When we were walking in the middle of the concrete cubes the feeling was a bit distressing. Definitely worth seeing!
Then we walked to the Rathaus, meaning the parliament house. In our eyes it looked more like a church or a castle :D We wouldn't mind working there..
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| On our way there.. |
After that we took a bus to Berlin Hauptbahnhof and then a train to see the Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall). We went to see the longest piece left from the wall. It is over 1 kilometer long and full of different paintings and graffiti.
The wall was impressive, but lower than we expected. Someone skilled would easily climb over it. The guide told us that yeah, you could have climbed it but then you would have been shot because the "no-mans-land" in between the walls was all the time guarded.
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| Picture from Hélèna |
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| Most popular painting, made from a picture so this really happened |
Then we took again the tram and went to Kreuzberg, which is a urban area filled with different restaurants and boutiques. The guide recommended us to go and have dinner there and named some specific places :) We decided to go to Kreuzburger, which reputedly has the best burgers in town. And yeah, they were good and really cheap! You got the burger, fries and a drink for 7 €.
The last sightseeing we wanted to see was Checkpoint Charlie. It used to be the entrance for important and popular people to go from west to east side of Berlin. There were two "soldiers" standing and having pictures with tourists. It cost 2 € to take one picture with them. We were just thinking that the guys must have been models instead of soldiers :D
The atmosphere in Berlin was totally different than in Köln. Of course Berlin was bigger, the buildings were higher, streets wider and so on, but all in all people too were different from Köln. In our opinion Berlin had more young people, urban atmosphere and it didn't feel that safe (even though nothing bad happened). Köln feels more traditional and maybe also richer. Köln is just perfect size and cozy. And the architecture is more beautiful here! At least in the old eastern side of Berlin some houses were quite horrible. Like in Tuira (a stadtmittel=area in Oulu) :D :D
Next post will be about our birthday party!
Bis später!
Maiju&Jenna
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