Berlin

2014/08/05

Berlin was never a city I had planned to visit on my holiday but I stopped over here as it was the best way to get from Budapest to Barcelona (the city I chose as my Emirates departure city) so thought I may as well spend a day here and see what there was. My flight arrived on time (which was good especially after a late departure) and collected my bag and then found the bus easily enough and then took the UBahn to the stop I needed and found my accommodation. By then I was totally knackered and as hot and sweaty as anything, first thing I did once find out the accommodation info was to jump in the shower and crash for the night.

Slept OK and woke up 7ish so sat tinkering around sorting my Budapest photos for the previous post and then headed out at 8:30am for my day of sightseeing, I didn’t wanna get going too early. I didn’t have a really good idea of all I wanted to see in Berlin but knew a few things which I got done. As a general holiday/sightseeing side note – don’t you just HATE it when there is construction or cleaning or whatever happening around the things you wanna see ?!?!? Very annoying. Today that was the Brandenburg Gate they were water pressure cleaning it. So were cranes and stuff in the way. I thought of maybe getting sunset pics like I’ve seen of it, but a) overcast and cloudy today so wouldn’t be a nice sunset visible and b) with the trucks and machines in the way pointless even thinking about it.

One disappointment today was this one car showroom being closed. I had kept it quiet and hadn’t told anyone I may see the car … but the guy who took me on the Audi A3 e-tron drive told me that there was a Bugatti Veyron in this VW show room place in Berlin, I went out specifically to find it (was actually on my way anyway) only to find it all under construction with notices on all the windows – sulk. That would have been really cool to have a few pictures with. Oh well – what can you do. Next door to it was this Microsoft Digital Eatery so looked round there (basically a coffee shop with Surfaces and other devices so people can get the feel for them in a nice environment) and used their free wifi a bit. Just show I don’t only support 1 vendor. I never got to the Apple Store here as it was about 2km further down this one road than I was going. So Microsoft Won the Battle of Berlin – LOL

Microsoft Digital Eatery outside

Microsoft Digital Eatery inside

I looked around all over the city, I think I’ll just post the photos and then describe them as and where needed. Seeing some of the memorials for things where there were human atrocities left me feeling a little bit weird, not that I know too much about the historical facts etc.

Brandenburg Gate

Brandenburg Gate showing the cleaning stuff in the way (previous pics I placed a lamp post/traffic light over the stuff)

Around 1ish it started to drizzle pretty steadily which sucked, I was sitting drinking a Berliner Pilsner beer at the time just down from the Brandenburg Gate, so up went the brolley and then it kept raining lightly for a good few hours.

Berliner Pilsner

Checkpoint Charlie

Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall – Peace

Berlin Wall Watchtower

Berliner Dom

Bellevue Palace

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Museum/Gallery (can’t recall which off hand)

Humpty Dumpty exhibit, I’ve seen the same thing in Salt Lake City (and I think in Paris too – not sure)

Siegesallee

Siegesallee (you can just see the TV tower – I walked from past there)

Berlin TV Tower and St Mary’s Church

Soviet War Memorial

Haus der Kultur en der Welt

Tower in Tiergarten

Parliament

Neue Wache

Church

Even this bear outside a tourist shop had a raincoat on

Bahnhof Potsdamer Platz

There were a few of these towers with mirrors on the top of them, not sure the whole reason but was cool

Eventually managed to get myself in one of them

All round the city you will see these Pink or Blue pipes, they are found near construction sites to move water around the place

I was at the far end of my day’s walk so headed back towards home direction and found other things I had missed on the outward journey. I had a few snacky things during the day to eat so didn’t need much dinner so just had a Currywurst from a place close by called Curry Mitte as a light dinner, was damn nice.

At 7ish I called it a day with my sightseeing as had been on the go for ages by then, so came home and caught up with a few people online and sorted out my suitcase a little bit. Seems I forgot (I think) to washing some TShirts in Munich so will have to make do and reuse a few, unless I did wash them and I just put them in a packet accidentally like I do with used stuff.

Only 1 country (Spain) and 1 city (Barcelona) to go then my holiday will be over.