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