Bunny says hi! He got to stay warm in the hostel all day :P I had coffee the place I'd passed the night before, but it turns out they just had two three group coffee machines next to each other. Not very exciting. Not very exciting coffee either.
There was kind of a rosetta but then the coffee was half froth, and the cup was really small so I only got a few mouthfuls of coffee :( But anyway, after my coffee I decided I'd buy a ticket for the hop on, hop off city bus tour, which was discounted to 15 euros if I bought from my hostel. There were little headphones attached to every seat that gave information about what we were driving past and stuff like that. The first place I got off was Potsdamer Platz, because the Lego museum was there and it sounded like there was heaps of other interesting stuff. I found the Lego museum pretty easily, this is a picture for Nancy!
Giraffe made of lego! It was pretty awesome. It turns out that the Lego place wasn't a museum, just an expensive playground full of nasty children. So I gave that a miss and wandered around a bit. The area I was in is the central business district, so it was all fancy and stuff. There was just a giant tv and movies museum place, which wasn't really what I was interested in. Nothing unique to Berlin :P But there was this place:
I don't think it was a remnant of the wall, but just a touristy monument thing. There was lots of information written on both sides, and this dude that spoke heaps of different languages offering to stamp peoples' passports. It was kinda cool. Anyway, I was hungry since I'd somehow forgotten to have breakfast, so I grabbed a bagel for early lunch from the Dunkin' Donuts, then jumped back on the bus. Next stop was the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, it's a house that used to overlook the wall that they've converted into a museum all about the wall and how people escaped from East Berlin. It was really interesting. I wasn't allowed to take photos inside, even though there were heaps of people taking them anyway.
When I hopped off the bus, there were all these ladies walking around asking if anyone spoke English. I made the mistake of saying yes, and one of them handed me a little piece of paper with some sob story on it that I could barely read, then started making a show of being cold and hungry. She was so obviously pretending, and I was pissed off because I've been cold since I got here dammit! Whatever. I just gave her back her piece of paper and walked off. These people were everywhere the tourists were, and after that if anyone asked if I spoke English I just said "nein" and kept walking :P
After the Checkpoint Charlie I went to the Jewish Museum. Check out this dude:
There were two guys with epic guns walking around outside! Then when I went in it was like airport security, I had to take my coat off *grumble* and put it and my bag through the scanner, then walk through the metal detector. Then they don't let you take your bags in, I had to check it into the cloakroom.
The museum was really interesting, it was designed by some dude in some revolutionary arty way which was supposed to represent all sorts of things. I just thought it was dumb because I kept getting lost in the maze and missing exhibits. But anyway, I eventually found my way to the top and the beginning of the timeline. It was a history of Jewish people in the area starting about 1000 years ago to present day. Although it got to 1933 when Jewish people were starting to get kicked out and all that, then it skipped the Holocaust and moved onto famous Jewish people nowadays. It was a bit strange, especially since the rest of the exhibit had such a heavy emphasis on how Jews were persecuted right through the middle ages. Maybe I just somehow missed the Holocaust bit, though I don't think so. Instead, there was a hallway that ended in this really creepy freezing cold dungeon tower thing. It was part of the original arty design, and was called the Holocaust tower.
Lookit! A lucet! I got so excited I had to take a photo :P
Anyway, I had a look through the souvenir shop and found a rubber ducky dressed as a Jew, which I thought was awesome so I bought it :P By now it was about 3pm, so I decided to hop back on the bus and ride it the rest of the way back to my hostel, just listening to all the stuff on the headphones. It took over an hour, andI was hungry when I got back so I decided to try the sushi place I'd seen
It was pretty amazing, and they make it fresh on the spot when you order it :D. Then when I got back to my room I found this:
My bed had been remade and bunny sat up against the ridiculously large stupid european pillow that everyone uses here :P Naaaaw. The guy in the bunk above mine was from Sydney, and his bed just got left the way it was. He'd gotten in late and me and another guy were already asleep, so he didn't have a chance to make his bed properly, his sheet was all ruffled up and the doona wasn't in the cover. If anyone's bed needed doing, it was his :P I think he was a bit put out by it. Clearly bunny's comfort was more important :P Anyway, I decided to check my emails in the lobby and eat my donut from Dunkin' Donuts. Grease the Musical is coming to Berlin in March, and Dunkin' Donuts had some sort of promotion deal with them, so I got a Grease Donut:
Om nom nom. Turns out it was a jam donut. After that, I had a shower and got ready to head off to We Will Rock You. I'd tried calling earlier in the day to get one of the cheap student tickets, which you can only get over the phone, but the lady said there weren't any left. I decided to risk it and just rock up to the theatre and get the best class C ticket I could. I had a little misadventure trying to find the theatre, because even though on the map it looks really simple, when you come out of the train station you have no idea which way is up or down. Turns out I walked sideways instead of down :P But eventually I found the theatre
So pretty! When I went inside to the box office the guy sold me a really good seat at the student price. I ended up in row 11 of the stalls, in the middle. I suppose when it's half an hour to curtain they sell whatever they can and whatever price :P THE SHOW WAS AWESOME! I think I already said that in my epic post about it :P
ANYWAY after the show I went back to the hotel and went to bed. That afternoon before I left for the theatre a young Asian guy checked into our room. I left him sitting on his bed on his laptop. When I got back he was in the same place. The next morning he slept late, then when I checked out at 10am there he was again sitting on his bed on his laptop. I wonder if he actually ended up doing anything in Berlin?
It snowed overnight, and oh man, the temperature dropped to so unbelievably cold. I'd decided to go on a walking tour, which probably would've been a better idea on Saturday in the sun. Anyway, there was a group from my hotel and a guide came and picked us up to take us to the meeting point in Parise Platz. There were a couple of embassies there, so more guys with guns wandering around, and about a million tourists. You could see all the little tour groups because some of them had little scarves they had to wear, or tour guides were carrying epic flags . There was some guy dressed as a chicken running around, and soldiers carrying flags and dressed in the uniform of that country. I've got some photos on facebook.
The tour started in the square at Brandenburg Gate.
It was built in the 1700s, and stood in the middle of no-man's land during the Cold War. On the other side there's a road with a line of cobblestones marking where the wall stood. Our tour guide was a Bristish student, and he was pretty awesome, telling us all sorts of useful historical things, like this building:
Doesn't look that great, mainly because no building in the square is allowed to overshadow the Brandenburg Gate. BUT it's the hotel that Michael Jackson dangled his baby out the window of! Ngl, that's pretty cool. When the guide told us that we all decided we HAD to have a photo of this building :P
Next we went outside the gate to hear about the Reichstag building.
It's basically a huge square filled with these slabs of stone. They rise higher towards the middle, then back down on the edges. It's not situated on any historical site, but it's here right in the middle of Berlin between the busy business centre of Potsdamer Platz and the touristy Parise Platz and the Reichstag building. The idea is that people who go to the concentration camps go because they want to remember the holocaust, but by putting this memorial here then everyone is reminded whether they want to be or not. It was an eerily beautiful place, and really quiet. We walked through to the other side.
There's also an information centre underground at one end, with the personal detailed stories of six Jews of different nationalities who were murdered, each one representing a million. We didn't have time to go inside, and I really wish I'd done the tour on Saturday and been able to see it afterwards.
By now my feet were burning from the cold, and I'd had to take my gloves off and shove my hands in my pockets, which was warmer because my fingers weren't all separated from each other. I was so unbelievably cold, the rest of the group kept looking at my sympathetically because I just couldn't cope. They were all from Canada or America, and were used to the cold. The last place I got to go to before I had to leave the tour to catch my train was here:
A seedy carpark! Yay! Actually, it's the former site of Hitler's bunker. The powers that be decided they didn't want to make a shrine of it, so currently it's flooded and buried, since their attempts to blow it up didn't exactly work. Duh, it's a bunker :P There's just a small sign saying that it used to be here and why it's not remembered and stuff like that.
I was really devastated to have to leave the tour, because it was so interesting and the tour guide really was very good. I'm sure everyone else thought I was just too cold to continue, and I did sort of stammer out my apologies through chattering teeth :P But I really did have a stupid train to catch. So I made my way back to my hostel, picked up my luggage, stocked up on some amazing cookies for the train ride, and made it to my platform exactly on time. The ride home was pretty uneventful, except I had an epic headache. I was actually feeling a bit fluey, which I'm sure was because of my morning spent imitating an iceblock. I don't actually know if I would've made it through the whole tour, I was in so much pain from the cold :(
I really needed at least another week in Berlin. One day I'll go back and see everything properly. The history of the place is so fascinating. Finally, one last photo:
Ponies! :D
OMG OMG OMG I wish I had read this post sooner what an EPIC GIRAFFE!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteAlso I totally got a mention in your blog, I think that makes me famous, right? =P
Miss you *hugs*