Berlin

Long weekend in Berlin from 16 Nov 07 to 19 Nov 07

I arrived late in the afternoon Friday, taking the airport shuttle from Tegel to my hotel at Alexanderplatz. The bus ride into town was very long and uncomfortable. I spent over an hour on the bus, and the bus was extremely crowded. I dumped my luggage at the hotel, and went out in search of some food before turning in. The weather was fairly cold, around 0 degrees Celsius, and it was windy. I walked along the "Unter den Linden" which was supposed to be one of the main touristy streets in Berlin according to my travel-guide. All I saw was lots of closed museums and old buildings. As I couldn't find a restaurant that was open, I decided to go back to Alexanderplatz and grab some junk food. I was quite cold at this point, so I decided to try to use the S-Bahn to get back. I spent almost 45 minutes waiting for a S-Bahn train that didn't show up. Turns out they were on strike. The annoying thing was that the loudspeakers in the station were still announcing the trains, so it took a while before I understood that further waiting would be fruitless. In retrospect I should probably have done some more research on which areas the restaurants were.

Saturday I had designated to be a shopping-day. I had decided to go visit the "Kaufhaus des Westens", which is biggest warehouse in Europe. I found it very nice, especially the delicacy section. I spent the rest of the day shopping on the KurfürstenDamm and at Potsdamer Platz. At Potsdamer Platz there was a snow slope advertising skiing areas in Austria, complete with Glühwein-stands.

Museum-wise I visited the Dali exhibition and Berlin museum (The story of Berlin). The Dali museum was very nice, much better than the one in Paris. The Berlin museum was also well worth the visit, lots of effort had been put into the exhibition.

I had designated Sunday to be my main touristy day for this trip. I started off by visiting the Pergamon museum. It contained archaeological artifacts from German expeditions to the Middle East. I was mostly impressed by the Ishtar gate and all of the Babylonian stuff (hadn't seen such things "in the stone" before..).

I walked over to the Brandenburger Tor - more or less the symbol of the reunited city. I continued past the memorials of people that had been shot trying to escape the DDR over to the Reichstag. There was a one hour line to get in, due to security inspections of everyone entering. Once I got in, I took the elevator up to the roof. On top of the roof there is a glass dome where you have a nice view of the city.

Next stop was the Checkpoint Charlie and the Mauermuseum next to it. There were some nice exhibits at the Mauermuseum, but the museum itself was really crowded.
Afterwards I walked over to the Jewish museum. The Jewish museum is located in a oddly shaped building, so much so that the building itself is the main exhibit. There's crooked angles everywhere, and the building is supposed to resemble a broken star of David.

On my way back to the hotel I had dinner at a Bavarian restaurant, where I finally tried the famous Schweinhaxe. I had heard from friends earlier how the waiters would try to kill you with meat. Turns out their explanations were not exaggerated - there was no way I was able to eat even half of it. They also served me proper Lövenbrau, which was very nice.

In the evening, in order to be touristy and get the full Berlin experience, I had the green beer - Berliner weisse mit schüss. Which was...interesting.

Monday morning, I started off fighting with my suitcase to make it accept all the stuff I had bought on my shopping spree on Saturday. Luckily, I managed to fit it all, but I was worried about whether the zippers would pop in transit.

This morning I went further east in Berlin, to see the longest preserved piece of the Berlin Wall -the East Side Gallery. Only a small part of it was preserved, and many of the pieces had been worn away. Also, scum had tagged over some of the pieces. Still, it was interesting to see what was left of the wall.

I took the U-bahn back to Mitte, and visited the "Topographie des Terrors"-exhibition, detailing the atrocities committed by the Gestapo and the execution commands during WW2.

Next I went to the Ku'Damm and visited the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedäcthnis-Kirche - a monumental church damaged by bombing raids during WW2. Part of it is old and bomb-damaged, part of it rebuilt and very modern, with very special stained-glass windows and a strange altar.

I had a few hours to kill before going to the airport, so I decided to visit the famous Zoo and aquarium.

After a quick lunch I picked up my suitcase and went to the airport. It was a long bus ride to get there, but at least I had a seat this time. If I go back to Berlin, I will certainly be using a taxi rather than endure more hours of the TXL-shuttle.
Arriving at the airport, I had another surprise waiting: It was impossible to check in until 1.5 hours before the plane leaves. I was there two hours before, so I had to lug my suitcase around while waiting for them to open up the check-in. It was also hard to find places to sit, because of the layout of the airport. I managed to get a chair at a Starbucks. I sat there wondering how such a big city could be so amateurish in how they arrange their airports and airport links. Probably it has to do with the fact that they have three small airports rather than a big one, owing to the history of the place.

Overall:
Berlin was very good for shopping, there wasn't that many museums there. Signposting in general was bad, you had really look around to find direction signs in the U-bahn stations. I was also surprised by the sucky airport and communications to and from the airport.

Pictures are here

Paris

Since we had November 1st off from work (love those "Official Holidays"), I decided to go to Paris for the long weekend. I had never been to Paris before, so I was planning on doing all those touristy things.

I took the Thalys-train to the station called "Gare du Nord". The train ride itself was fairly unpleasant, very crowded and some kid puked a few seats away, so the whole carriage was smelling of puke and kids were screaming at the top of their lungs. That's what I get for traveling monkey-class, I guess, but since the train ride was already more expensive than flying, I wasn't too keen on forking out extra cash for an upgrade.

I was staying at a hotel called "Hotel Magenta" which was close to the Gare de l'Est railway station. This was not a very nice neighborhood. Every few hundred meters you would see hobos, and there were the occasional puddles of puke and urine along the sidewalk. The upside was that it was not very far from the metro station, and it wasn't too expensive.

I dumped my luggage at the hotel and took the metro to Notre Dame. I went inside the church and visited the treasury, where they had some nice artifacts. The afternoon I spent walking around in the Latin quarter.

In the evening walked around in Montmartre. I ended up walking past Moulin Rouge into the Pigalle neighborhood, which is not a nice place to walk alone as a guy. There were lots of people hassling me,and at one point an old woman grabbed my arm and tried to pull me into a club. Uncool.

Friday morning I decided to get the Eiffel Tower out of the way. I went over there by metro and found my place in line. An hour and a half later I was finally at the elevators. They closed off the top level because of overcrowding, so I could only get up to the second level. The whole site was very crowded, and you were walking in a line the whole time. It was a relief to get back down to the ground and away from the crowds.

Next, I walked over to The army museum and the dome church. The dome church is the burial place for some of France's war heroes, and at the center of the church you can find the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte. The army museum was very interesting, and well maintained. It had a very big collection of suits of armor, and some very interesting Great War-stuff.

I proceeded to walk through the touristy areas, the Champs-Elysees, Place de la Concorde, and the Rue Saint Honore. I made the mistake of having lunch at a cafe in this area. They had a very rude waiter who was very focused on clearing tables. He was almost tossing out people when they had finished their meals. I had never seen anything like this before. Eating in the most touristy areas is maybe not the best thing to do in Paris.

In the evening I went back to the Latin quarter and had dinner at a very bad Greek restaurant. I had bad food and bad wine, and spent forever waiting to pay my bill. Just another reminder to stay away from touristy areas, I guess...


Saturday I got up early to try to beat the crowds to the more popular places. I started out by going to the Sainte-Chapelle. There were no lines so early in the morning, so I could just walk straight into it. It was the most beautiful church I have ever been in.

Later I queued for an hour to get up to the roof of the Notre Dame. The lines are long because they don't let that many people up at the same time, which means that you actually get to see something once you get up there. I really liked the gargoyle viewing platform. The roof had a really great view of Paris, much better in my opinion than the view from the Eiffel Tower. There were also many interesting gargoyles up there. This was definitely my favorite spot in the city.

Next I took the metro to Montparnasse and had lunch at a very nice cafe. I received excellent service and they had very good food. I decided against going down into the catacombs that day as there were very long lines - several hundred meters.
Instead I took the metro to Arc du Triomphe. I walked up to the roof and watched the "Star" of roads beaming out from the arch. Of course there was a line to get up there, but it moved really fast, so I think I only waited for twenty minutes or so.


After the arch, I went by metro to Montmartre. I watched the crowds and walked around for a bit in the small streets. I visited the Dali museum, but it was not that nice. It sort of felt like those movie score cd's which say "music from and inspired by" with one or two tracks from the movie, and the rest just generic crap they threw in to fill up the album. Not worth the time or the entrance fee of 10 euro.

I took the metro back again to Arc the Triomphe and walked down the Champs-Elysees, doing some shopping on the way.

In the evening I walked around for a few hours in the Marais district and Les Halles. I ended up having dinner at this cafe with really pretty waitresses and really crappy food. Again I had a bad experience eating in the touristy areas...

I took the metro to Bastille, found a nice bar and had some nice drinks while watching the nightlife. Bastille looked like a lively area.

Sunday morning I took the metro to Catacombs, and managed to get there before a huge line had formed. The catacombs were pretty creepy - corridors full of skulls and femurs stacked to head-height forming walls and monuments.

After exiting the catacombs, I walked around Montparnasse to Pantheon. I went inside, and visited the crypt, where the famous French thinkers and statesmen are buried. I had lunch near the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Since I still had a few hours to kill, I went to the museum called "Metiers en Arts". It was an engineering museum, and would probably have been more interesting if I had been more geeky.

In the afternoon I took the Thalys back to The Hague. This time one of the toilets malfunctioned, smelling up the carriage. Good thing the train ride was only three and a half hours or so.

In general I liked Paris, and I will return, although I think I will go by plane the next time...
Pictures are here