Berlin, part III - the Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor)

I think I had too many pictures in my last entry and not enough for this one.

Visited the Brandenburg Gate, which in my opinion looked a lot like the Arc de triomphe de l'Étoile in Paris.

Lots of photobombs here!

Swimming in visitors, of course.

And I am just another idiotic tourist trying to get in a selfie.

The two guys on the left grinning my way.

Got better lighting from the other side.

So, finally a picture in which the people I accidentally photo'd don't feature.

Perspective, perspective.

This is what the Brandenburg neighborhood looks like.

And this.

An exhibit on Hitler, but I can't read Deutsch. I have an excuse for that, by the way. As Oscar Wilde said, "Life is too short to learn German." No wonder I wrote my master's dissertation on him. The man's a genius.

I caught a bus to Dresden, and arrived there around 11pm. Journey took around two hours. The hostel looked really easy to navigate from the bus station according to google maps, but it was so dark in Dresden, add to the fact that there were NO STREET LIGHTS whatsoever, that it took me a good 15 minutes to find it, when it should have been a 5 minute walk. Although Dresden was gorgeous, I didn't care for it that much.

In conclusion, Berlin was probably my least favourite part of the trip, but to be fair that had a lot to do with my cold and the unrelenting German sun. I genuinely liked the Wall and I feel that I would have liked the Tor a lot better too if I hadn't been so sick. The Gedächtniskirche however was rather boring but since I happened to be in the neighborhood anyway I'm not complaining that much.

Pierre was a good kid - he was one of the high points of Berlin - but I'm annoyed that he'll probably remember me as the Asian girl who had a terrific cold and one hell of a nasally voice. What a thing to remember someone by! Then again, he'll probably forget all about me and consign me to the oblivion of hostel hasbeens.

Vignettes: waiting for the bus to Dresden and watching chubby German pigeons peck around me in a hopeful bid for food. When I was in Ghent, I ate my sandwich  next to the canal and fed a lone duck that was waddling around and looking peckish. The next thing you know, all the other ducks in the canal have waded out, and are plodding around me, doodling for their share.

TBC..

Berlin, part II - the Wall

I took so many pictures of the wall, and went from west side to east side, and on top of that it was boiling.

I think I might talk a bit about the people I met at the hostel. I rather liked them, and I'm sure I would have liked them a lot better if I wasn't so sick. There were a bunch of rather fit Egyptians and an incredibly good looking ginger from Italy called Pierre who kept walking around the room in his pants. The Egyptians were very friendly, but one of them insisted on making me repeat his name, through my nasal voice, till I could properly pronounce it. I immediately forgot it, of course. I was too tired to argue with him. When I told Will about this, he said that he would have trolled him and kept on saying it wrong.

Pierre rocked, though as usual he was younger than me, a very fresh faced 20. On the second day we hung out for a bit and ended up going to one of the supermarkets in Alexanderplatz and having lunch together in the Platz. I bought loads of hilariously overpriced fruit and a bee buzzed over to inspect my lunch. I do not like bees and freaked out quite a bit while Pierre sat there and roared with laughter. I felt rather silly about this but the bee was really quite furry and fuzzy and just the way I hate them. After I'd managed to get the bee off my case, Pierre told me that he'd enjoyed the whole scene a lot. I didn't know whether to be pleased or offended. Pierre's a medical student, and like Will and Vera in Wroclaw, was staying at the hostel till he found a place to stay. He told me about how difficult it was to find accommodation and how he kept getting rainchecked by potential landlords. He had to go to his school in the afternoon and asked me if I wanted to accompany him, but my cold felt so horrendous that I had to decline. We talked about rather average things; about how we both liked travelling and meeting people, seizing the moment, living la vida loca, and the usual stuff you talk about when you meet people that can think. The pretentiousness of facebooking people you meet while travelling. He told me how he'd spent a year (or was it half a year?) backpacking in Latin America, the hearts he'd broken, the girls he'd fallen in love with. Fell in love with and despaired over, as Jake would say. Though to be honest Pierre wasn't that despondent. He takes life very seriously, but he's still a player. He said that he was tired of saying goodbye and walking out of people's lives.

He also spent a good hour or so trolling the Egyptians and some of their beliefs, but I'm not going to write too much about that since it's a public domain after all and I don't want to get anyone into trouble.

Went over to the West side gallery located at Nordbahnhof (metro lines S1, S2, S25). This used to be a ghost station, and still retains a lot of its previous creepiness. Rather unsettling place for sure.

A...plaque, I'll call it.

Just to say that I've been here and did not notice its unfortunate name.

The West Side Gallery.

I then took a tram to the East Side Gallery. I couldn't find a gallery, but I did find the Wall.

A view from the tram. I think, but am not wholly sure, that the metal pipes denote where the Wall used to stand.

Found it.

And of course, the inevitable barrage of photos.

It was quite a walk from the tram stop though, although the Germans were very obliging when I asked for directions. When I asked a shopkeeper where "the wall" was, he pointed at one of the walls in his shop and said "Here it is!" Whilst I goggled at it, he gave a chuckle, told me he was just messing about and pointed me in the right direction.

Both sides of the wall.

The neighborhood.

Took the metro back to Alexanderplatz.

Frankfurt, be there soon.

And yes, my FOOD. Quite a hearty serving as they come at a Bavarian restaurant next to the hostel. The yellow balls tasted an awful lot like polenta, the vegetables had been pickled and tasted deliciously tangy, and the meat was stringy.

To be continued.

Berlin, part I - Charlottenburg Palace and the Gedächtniskirche

As mentioned earlier, I caught a terrific cold in Wroclaw which manifested itself with a vengeance the moment I set foot in Berlin. It might have been the vodka. It might have been the fact that I slept for less than 2 hours the previous night. Or my monthly cycle. Probably a combination of all of them. The fact is, those two days in Berlin were hell - I hadn't caught cold, not even once, during my entire year in England, but more than made up for that during the latter half of my journey. Getting incredibly sick is the very worst thing that can happen when you're travelling. Even looking at these pictures reminds me of how well and truly miserable I was. Alternating between blowing my nose so much it almost fell off, my swollen tonsils, terrifically sore throat, blocked nose, and the fact that I was hardly able to sleep properly for at least a week because of above symptoms, especially the two nights in Berlin - ARGH. Abject and utter misery.

Managed to cover all the things I wanted to see, nonetheless. I arrived in Berlin around midday, took the metro to Alexanderplatz where my hostel was, left my backpack there and went off to the Charlottenburg Palace. This hostel does NOT provide free WiFi - you have to pay 1 euro for a 24 hour access. First and last hostel I've encountered that does this.

Anyway, a huge model of Ritter chocolates in the Berlin Hbf.

It's everywhere.

Alexanderplatz station. I wish I'd been healthy enough at the time to appreciate this, since I usually like big and flashy train stations.

Anyhoo, the metro station for Charlottenburg Palace, which was called...wait for it...Charlottenburg.

Since I had a 48 hour pass, I opted to take the bus from the metro station, which was 2 stops. The weather was frightfully hot and I had a huge headache from my cold, so I'm not apologising for being lazy.

Some fancy building opposite the Charlottenburg Palace.

Approaching the Charlottenburg Palace - which was a carbon clone of Vienna's Schonnbrunn. I wish I'd just picked one of them to go with, since from the outside at least (I didn't go in either one of them) they're almost identical.

I did like the sculptures of the men with discs, though, the "guardians of the palace." I tried googling to see who they were - they reminded me of Perseus, or even Apollo - but all I could find was "warrior statues at the Charlottenburg Palace." Very helpful!

Friedrich Wilhelm I, the Elector of Brandenburg.

The Elector from a wee distance.

Ground plans for the Schloss.

Part of the Schloss' extensive grounds.

Since I had a bit of time left (loads, actually) I went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, or the Gedächtniskirche. It was a VERY prominent landmark - I could see it from the overground metro.

It's kind of situated at a traffic junction though, so it was really quite hard to get a halfway decent picture.