Day Twenty-One: Berlin

We had a three hour walking tour this morning, which was no where near as horrible as it sounds. Our tour guide, Jim, was an American who has been living in Berlin for the last 5 years, and studies its history. He was the first tour guide we’ve had that hasn’t had a strong European accent we haven’t been able to catch every word of, and his enthusiasm was contagious. He took us to most of the historical sites of Berlin, not skimping on any of the facts either. We saw Museum Island, the Brandenburg gate, Jewish Memorial, site where Hitler’s bunker used to sit and walked past the Topography of Terror, ending at Checkpoint Charlie. It was a fantastic tour and didn’t nearly feel like the three hours.

After the tour we met up with Dean and Daniel and went to have some lunch. Then it was off to the Topography of Terror to learn about the SAS and see another segment of the Berlin wall. We then headed off to the Lego store and Legoland! There was a giant giraffe made of Lego and Duplo and a Lego cowboy that actually played the guitar! Though we didn’t actually go down into the proper Legoland because of time and it seemed a bit expensive for Lego. Justine instead contented herself with buying every Harry Potter character they had in a Lego keychain. And seeing as bus driver Steve doesn’t like horses, we bought him a little round pony toy. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it!

We then hit the souvenir shops to find ourselves some Ampelmännchen. Ampelmänn as we affectionately call him is the green walking man on the East Berlin traffic lights. When the Berlin wall came down, the East Berliners fought to keep their Ampelmänn, who walks across the road with his hat and briefcase on his way to work. He’s a very cute communist symbol; I even bought lollies shaped like him!

We headed back to the hotel where Justine and the group headed out for dinner and I slept. As Justine’s asthma was playing up she decided not to come out on tonight’s optional activity, which was the Eye Spy Tour. Our tour leaded Nicolai showed us one of the last remaining sections of No Mans Land, between the outer and inner sides of the Berlin wall. We also saw one of the last remaining watchtowers and learnt about the tunnels that were dug from West to East Berlin to help people escape. Then it was off to our first bar, a Russian bar with stuffed animals!

To get to the next stop we had to decipher the clues left by ‘West Berliners’ helping us escape from East Berlin. It was rather amusing to see a group of tipsy people running through the streets searching for random pieces of paper. We made it to the next bar unscathed, where there were extremely cheap drinks! After a few shots we headed off to the final club where we met Dean and Daniel once again. It was a really fun night, with cheap drinks so by the end of the night my wallet wasn’t feeling too much of the pain. Though I think I may tomorrow.