Blog: The German Tour: part three - Sightseeing

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Friday morning started up at a leisurely pace, and it was well past noon when we wandered our way into town to have a look at Berlin itself. Berlin, as I may have mentioned (and will be mentioning again) is a) GRATE b) AWESOME - and i mean "awesome" in the correct AND incorrect manner. Everywhere you go there is MASSIVE amounts of HISTORY.

For instance, as soon as we got out of the tube at Potsdamer Platz we were aware of all the HISTORY that had happened there. In fact we got so excited that we incorrectly identified A Large Grass Mound as THE WALL, and so got rather confused when we eventually found Hansa Studio, having taken guidance from a POSTMAN. We knew it was "in the shadow of the wall" but it appeared to be in the EAST. It wasn't until we got back to Potsdamer Platz that we realised it was, but we'd worked it out wrong.

ALSO in Potsdamer Platz was a HUGE Ski Slope, with real snow and small children HURTLING down it on Rubber Rings. "Let's DO IT!" said "We're on HOLIDAY!" Frankie very kindly offered to film it, rather than HURTLE TO HIS DOOM so, after much persuasion, I managed to get Tim to have a go too. It was BRILL - i GENEROUSLY allowed Tim to go first and was surprised to see a) the Fairground Professional pushed him off the ledge backwards b) while spinning him around and c) the look of SHEER TERROR on Tim's face as he clung for dear life to the ring. I thought "Well, Tim got to the end in one piece, and I'm sure they wouldn't have let us up here if it'd KILL us" so concentrated instead on going "WHEEEEEEE!"

Rather LESS jollity was head as we looked at the Berlin Wall exhibit nearby and then moved down to have a walk through The Holocaust Memorial, which was very impressive. They'd only started building it last time I'd been, and it looked amazing and felt suitably sombre once inside.

Next was The Brandenburg Gate - when I first came to Berlin a few years ago with The Stone In My Statue I'd been overwhelmed with memories of watching this place on telly and felt exactly the same again, although perhaps DAFTLY I couldn't shift the idea from my head that it'd all been done in LEGO. The week after the wall came down (TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO!!) there'd been a Lego advert in The Independent showing Lego East Berliners swarming happily through a Lego Berlin Wall with a Lego Brandenburg Gate behind it. I'd had it pinned to my wall as it was such a beautiful thing, but now whenever I think of The Fall Of Communism I think of it in terms of little plastic bricks!

More wandering around led us to queuing to get into The Reichstag, but the length of the queue combined with the MIME going on next to us meant we were soon in THE PUB. It was an ACTUAL PUB too, the first I'd seen in the city centre, where we drank Berliner Beer.

Soon though it was time to head home, where we found Martin ready and waiting for us. We needed a bit more time to get packed so he popped off to get an acoustic guitar and we re-gathered twenty minutes later, ready to hit The Autobahn.

ADVENTURE awaited us!

posted 18/11/2009 by MJ Hibbett

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