Educational vacation in Berlin
I travel with my family a lot. We always go on an international holiday during the summer holiday and sometimes during other vacations as well. Like this trip for example. It was the weekend and week leading up to Easter and it was the perfect time for a four day holiday to Berlin.
In our family, it's always been mostly my mother and little brother that's been interested in history, even my father to some degree but I've never really been that into it. That has changed lately. I'm not sure why but I'm becoming more and more fascinated with our world's history and if I could I would smack my younger self over the head from not paying at most attention during the history classes. However, classes can't really compete with standing with your feet on the very places where battles were fought.
Berlin is a city rich on history, undeniably one of the most historic European cities. As a Dane, I've learnt about Germany from a young age. I've even studied German for five years while I have nothing to show for it as I still can't speak a proper sentence and can only averagely understand German if I hear it.
My mother had planned out almost every step and when we arrived in Berlin in the early morning on Saturday, we got started right away. We had booked nH hotel located at Friedrich straße, a very local and historical street which conveniently was located right next to a train station that we ended up using quite a lot.
The first day is a bit of a blur in my memory, maybe because I had to get up before 5 in the morning or maybe because we in total walked about 18 kilometre around Berlin.
However, I do remember some of the sites we walked to. Firstly we managed to find Gendarmenmarkt, I'm not sure we really meant to find that but it was a very beautiful building nevertheless.
Next, we ventured to the famous Emperor Wilhelm Memorial Church, which we later learned that Berliners nicknamed "the hollow tooth" for it's unique appearance. Apparently I wasn't on my photography game yet but I did manage to take a photo of the ceiling. The building was still covered in bullet holes and worse damages but it still stands today, damaged but undefeated.
They rebuild a new church just opposite it and from the outside it looks like an ugly black box, nothing compared to the prestige of the old church. However, on the inside the light shines in from the outside through the glass which in reality is blue and it's a very unique and prettier sight from the inside.
We wandered aimlessly around and then walked through the length of Tiergarten, walking towards Brandenburger Tor. We had a layover in Berlin a few years back where we managed to see and spend time at Brandenburger Tor, so it wasn't at our priority list this time.
We switched between walking on the main road and the paths inside Tiergarten. The only animals that we managed to spot was a hare, a squirrel and a few small birds. The garden wasn't yet in bloom and still tried to shake off winter, so I imagine it will be prettier in a month or so.
By the time we returned to our hotel, I was absolutely knackered and only managed to go out for dinner nearby before returning to the hotel room. The rest of my family went on an evening stroll although they came back rather quick, probably really tired as well.
Our second day would begin with the first of two guided tours. We had chosen our tours with Insider Tour and chosen them in English as my little brother and I weren't competent enough to understand a tour narrated in German. They offered a range of eight tours and my mother had selected two and the first would be the 3rd Reich Berlin: Hitler & WWII - The Final Days. Our tour guide was an Aussie named Taylor and the rest of our group was only people from UK and US.
We met at Zoologischer Garten in West after having arrived the tour spot in East where our specific tour didn't start from and we had to hurry to the right spot. I got too engulfed with the story telling because the only photo I managed to take was one of the Reichtag building. We walked and took the train to various other important sites like were Hitler's bunker would have been, the only bridge that kept the Soviet soilders from Reichtag, the victory monoment Soviet planted on the English territory, memorial for the "gypsies", and so on.
Having a tour guide that love the city they are showing makes all the difference. They have cute little anecdotes about historic facts and we were also told a bit about Hitler's childhood and young adulthood.
The tour lasted a little over 4 hours and consisted mostly of walking. My legs was still a bit sore from the day before so it was safe to say that I was a bit tired when we were done. It's wasn't really the walking, that was fine but stopping and standing was what didn't suit my legs.
We finished near a strip of the wall that had been untouched. More interestingly though, was it the part where secret police's old building had stood and underneath you could see the old cells, thus having two layers of history on top of each other.
We went into the Museum Topographie Des Terrors and that museum kind of reaffirmed why I don't like museums. It was interesting enough and kindly double described (in English and German) but it was still just words on a wall next to old photos. One of the interesting things was the display of authentic documents, that at least wasn't something you could search up on google.
Maybe, I was just a bit tired because I was happy when we finally returned home to the hotel for a few hours of relaxing before heading our to dinner nearby. Almost by accident, we ended up dining in a really fancy french restaurant and we all had a really tasty stake with a potato side.
The next day was the big museum day. We began with going to the DDR museum and we arrived so early that the doors hadn't even opened yet. Still, there was a lot of people like us. Surprisingly, a lot of Germans and school classes as well. This museum was a bit more interesting and interactive. You could even get to sit in a real old school Trabant. Also, it was made so you pulled out drawers to look at real stuff inside. It was interesting to read and learn about how people lived back then and how it was so different from now. Another funny thing was that we managed to find an old electric whisk identical to ours back at home. I always knew my mother had bought it in DDR back in the day but it still astonishes me that one of our kitchen aids was in a museum and it still works today!
Our old but reliable whisk, the one in the museum was orange.
When we exited the museum, the line out front was at least ten times longer and I was happy we had been early. My father has some odd ideas sometimes when we're on vacation and it's usually that we need to visit a park or a cave or something but this time it was the radio tower. It was kind of a nightmare for me. People everywhere and I got stressed just when we needed to buy our tickets. The radio tower was so busy that we had 1,5 hour wait before we could go up.
Please ignore the umbrella, my father thought it would be funny to throw it up while I was taking a photo.
We signed up for the SMS service that would let us know half an hour before and went to lunch at a really interesting Italian restaurant where they cooked the dish right before your eyes. It was absolutely delicious. The time finally arrived and it was a fun experience travelling in a lift that moved six meters per second. I didn't get much out of the view from up there and as our tour guide would come to say "Berlin only really has one skyline and that's it" and indeed it wasn't much of a skyline view without having the radio tower in it.
Also fun fact, the pink lines you can see on the photos above are water lines used for construction. Usually you would dig those underground but Berlin is truly a city in growth and it would be too much bother to dig them up and down so often. So instead the lines move around the city above ground. Apparently, Berliners like them as they think they resemble some sort of art constellation.
My mother was very keen on seeing Alexander Platz but it grew very windy and began to drizzle as we arrived and we sought shelter in a café while it rained. We decided against a full stroll around the platz and instead took to the underground and travelled to the most famous Checkpoint Charlie.
We didn't venture directly into the Checkpoint Charlie museum and instead we explored the area a bit. The quite famous American sector sign still stood in its original place.
However, as you can see it's now surrounded by urban life. The museum down the street was very compact but fascinating. I mostly enjoy the upper floor where escape stories were showcased. People can become very creative when they needed to smuggle someone through the checkpoints. It must have been terrifying.
This was the one night where we didn't go for another international restaurant and instead went down Friedrich straße in search for a German kneipe. I stayed clear of the more German dishes while my father and brother went for a dish starting with Eis. Its real name escapes me. It definitely wasn't my cup of tea and I generally don't travel for the food but my father does and of course he should be allowed to taste a real German dish.
Tuesday had come and it was officially the last day of our trip. We had yet another tour to go on and in fact we almost cancelled it. My mother had gone out for her morning coffee and said that she had been soaked. We decided to persevere and luckily it stayed mostly dry although very, very windy. It was yet another Insider Tour and we met at the West meeting point again. This time we were going on the Cold War Berlin: Behind the Wall tour again with an English guide. This time we got the English Barnaby and our group consisted of Aussies, Brits and Americans. We walked around quite a few of the same places as we did ourselves on the first day but it was so much more interesting with a storyteller along.
Again I was engulfed in the story telling and Barnaby had quite a few funny personal stories. One of his old friends had apparently been a spy during the Cold War. Mostly, the tour focused on the "Mauer" and the people who lived in Berlin while it was standing. Evidently, East Berliners don't remember the time as only bad and children who grew up in East remember an easy childhood. Of course there was no crime as the people in charge were the criminals.
I thought all of the Mauer was caged in as it is in certain places but we did walk alongside a part where you could still reach out and touch it. I would have thought that it would have to be protected from people stealing pieces and it most likely should be but there was something grand about being able to touch it with your own finger tips.
This is the outer wall facing the West (you would only see grafitti on this side)
Most of the Wall has been torn down, as it should, but a trail of cobblestones has been laid on the exact place where the Wall stood to show where it ran. It was a big argument of which way the letters should face but in the end, as always, the victor gets to tell the story and the writing is readable from the West and upside-down for the East.
We also got the opportunity to see one of the few places where the death strip (or no man's land) had been perserved. It still had an eerie feeling about it and even a racket launcher still thrust into the sand.
The death strip also contained one of the many feared guard towers. A interesting fact about the guards; they always travelled in threes and it would never be three single men as married men had more to lose and would be less likely to try and escape. If a guard had to use the bathroom he would be accompanied by one of the other two and the last one would be locked in a room. Also if they didn't shoot to kill when they saw someone in the death strip, they would have been killed themselves. Quite unnerving that they had to do so much to prevent people from escaping or showing compassion.
Our tour ended at the radio tower and my mother and I had decided we would go for lunch at the Italian place again. It was just as delicious the second time around. I like to be able to see everything they put in my food and it was quite amazing how they worked their cooking tools with such perfection. You ordered the food with cards you got handed when you arrived and then you handed them back and then paid when you were leaving. Odd.
We were supposed to be flying home on a flight from Tegel at 6 o'clock that evening but due to weather conditions our flight got delayed and then cancelled and our rebooked flight then got cancelled due to a mechanical error after having been delayed by missing pilots. I won't get too into the details as it still frustrates me but my father rebooked an early morning flight from another airport as he had to get home and the rest of us got settled into a hotel after having stood in a queue for hours. We only managed to get the right phone number to contact because some other Danes helped us (thank you!) and then finally we flew to Düsseldorf and then Copenhagen the following afternoon.
I was pleasantly surprise by how helpful our fellow Danes were and everyone took the whole thing quite calmly with the exception of my brother one time while we were queueing. I can't tell you the relief to spot Amager from the flight window after a night with very little sleep.
My father had to nap during the afternoon but arrived to pick us up at the airport. As much as I'm warming up the the idea of travel and think it's interesting and fascinating to experience another country and another culture, I do really love my home and I was so glad to be back. Even if we did arrive home without our bagage (it did arrive 24 hours later). The sun was setting as we drove home and it was as if Denmark was welcoming us home.
Also, I did reaffirm my tradition from last year of buying a T-shirt from the city I visited.
If I was to sum up a bit of advice and must-sees, it would be this:
- When choosing a hotel go for location above all else, starting out central in a big city is key.
Friedrich straße can definitely be recommended.
- Buy a day ticket for transportation. We got a day group ticket for 16 euro to cover five people. You have to stamp at the beginning of the day and you might get controlled when on the train. It's a heavy fine for travelling without a ticket.
- Must sees include Tiergarten, Brandenburger Tor, Reichtag building, the Mauer (any part really) and the DDR Museum.
- Bring good walking shoes, Berlin is a city best experienced on foot.
- I would really reccomened getting a guided tour. Insider Tour was really good and super informative with nice guides and they offer eight different tours. They cost 12-15 euro for adults/10-12 euro for students and children and last between 4-6 hours.
I'm so happy I finally got around to writing this. I needed to do it while it was still fresh in my memory. It's just a lot of work but I'm so happy I've gotten all of my experiences written down. I'm kind of sad I never got to finish the vacation posts from USA last summer but at least I managed to do LA then and Berlin now. And I'm going travelling again this summer!
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