Berlin Day 2

The second (and last) day of my Berlin trip started early.  Kate and I got up around 8 and were out the door by 9.  Our first stop of the day was at the East Side Gallery, the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall which has been turned into a public art space.  Getting there was an adventure.  It turned out the metro line we needed to transfer to was closed for two weeks, so we had to backtrack and get there another way.  While doing this, we were stopped by someone from the transit authority who informed us that our reduced price student tickets were actually only for people from ages 5 to 17 so we had to get off the metro and buy new tickets.  At least we didn't get a fine!  The man was very patient, and we didn't bother to tell him we'd been traveling with the same reduced ticket the day before.

After the gallery, we headed back to the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate to get some pictures we hadn't gotten the day before when Kate was in desperate need of socks.  This was followed by breakfast.  Finally around 1 pm we made it to the zoo.  The Berlin Zoo is famously large, and exploring it in the sort-of rain was amazing.  On a primatology note, they have representatives of all 4 species of Great Apes--chimpanzees, gorillas, chimpanzees, and gibbons.  Pretty cool.

Next, we headed over to Charlottenburg Schloss, which is a pretty huge baroque castle in the Berlin city limits.  We opted not to go inside since we'd bought a three day pass to all of the museums in Berlin and intended to make good use of it.  The main two museums we wanted to go to were the Gemaldegalerie and the Neue National Museum.  The Gemaldegalerie was good; I was even able to find a painting that I could write about for my next art and architecture paper.  Unfortunately, when we walked over to the Neue National Museum, it turned out that they were closed for "reinstallation" until April.  At this point, it was past 5 pm and all of the other museums were closed.  And it was raining.  We ended up going to see Marley and Me.  The movie was chosen not because we desperately wanted to see it, but because it was dubbed in German with no English subtitles and we figured it would be the easiest to understand without understanding any of the words.  We were correct.

We ended up the evening with dinner at our Mexican food restaurant we'd tried to go to the day before.  It was definitely worth the return trip.  However, Sunday night was a big night for them and it took us an hour and ten minutes to get our food.  You didn't think things would go smoothly did you?  After dinner, we had just enough time to go back to the Pfefferbett and get our stuff out of our lockers and head to the bus station to catch our night bus back to Prague.  Sleep came a little easier this time around on the bus which arrived in Prague at 5 am, just in time for the metro to start running in the morning and take us home.

East Side Gallery

Reichstag

Brandenburg Gate

Brandenburg Gate again

Schlotzky's?  Really?

Entrance to the zoo

Not exactly welcoming, but it made me happy

The slightly sad chimpanzee enclosure

This orangutan and the little boy were having a heart to heart

Chillin

Capuchin Monkeys really are adorable

Mandrill and her baby taking a nap

Squirrel Monkeys

They were probably the most active of the primates

The outdoor buildings are really old--way cooler than our home zoo

Giraffes.  They were smart and stayed under cover while it drizzled

Elephants

Flamingos

Really adorable desert cat

Tree lions?

All cats really are the same.  This lion was rolling around on its back, often with its feet up in the air.

I have no idea what these are, but they certainly like that heat lamp

Sleepy panda

The penguins by far had the best enclosure of the bunch

Berlin radio tower, near Charlottenburg Schloss

We passed by our bus station in the daylight, so I thought I'd document it.

Adorable car wash sign

Charlottenburg Schloss

Park/Walkway leading up to the Schloss

Kulturforum, home of the Gemaldegalerie and other museums

Botticelli

Fra Angelico - I remembered his name from AcDec!

Raphael

Kate perusing the paintings

I don't think they could fit any more people on this bench if they tried

Titian

Very large oddly placed room in the middle of the museum

Monkeys!

Neue National Gallery

Empty metro on the way to the bus station at 11:30 pm on a Sunday night

Berlin Day 1

Berlin was an interesting experience to say the least.  I think it's pretty impressive that even after the amount of things acting against Kate and I in having fun on this trip we still fell in love with the city.  To begin with, we took the bus from Prague to Berlin.  That wasn't the problem, we'd both taken Student Agency buses before and enjoyed them.  However, this particular bus (the only one from Prague to Berlin) departed Praha at 11:55 pm and arrived in Berlin at precisely 4:30 in the morning.  A bit daunting to say the least.  Luckily for us, we were traveling on a weekend, so the metro in Berlin was operating 24 hours a day and all we had to do was hop on the metro near the bus station and head over to the hostel.

When we arrived at the hostel, another surprise (although not really a surprise as we'd assumed it would be the case) awaited--we couldn't check into our room until 3 pm.  We'd arrived at 5:17 am hoping to take a nap before hitting the town.  Not so much.  We were able to check out lockers in the lobby and drop off our stuff, and we could hang out in the downstairs cafe area, but we would not be getting the rest we so desperately desired.  The German girl working the front desk clearly sympathized with us but there was nothing she could do.  So, we found a comfy looking bench in a back corner away from the roaming drunk British students who were sitting around playing cards and being rambunctious and made a plan for the day ahead.  The very, very long day ahead.

After about 15 minutes of sitting around at the Pfefferbett (best name ever!) we decided to hit up a 24-hour cafe that was in our guidebook, which turned out to be an excellent decision.  Also, the metro ride to get there took about a half an hour on the U-bahn (one of the two metro systems, the other being the very superior S-bahn) which was good for passing the several hours we needed to kill before we could sleep.  The trip was totally worth it, and after we were done eating at approximately 7:45 am we opted to walk across Tiergarten and Potsdamer Platz to get to the meeting point for the free tour we would be taking.  The tour group met at 11:00.  We had time, which was good as it wasn't exactly a short walk.

 

We arrived at the starting point of the tour at 11 on the dot after stops at a few touristy attractions along the way.  Naturally, we were both pretty excited when we discovered that our tour guide was not only awesome in the general tour guide way, but also awesome in that he was Australian.  Of course, the travel gods couldn't let it be that easy.  The weather decided to rain on our free tour parade.  It didn't rain literally--just figuratively.  It was cold and almost rainy and Kate stepped in a puddle which led to her needing to buy new socks.  Good times.

About half way through what would have been an upwards of three hours tour, we decided we just couldn't do it any more, glorious Australian tour guide or no.  We decided to make our way over to one of the city's museums where it would be warm inside after lunch at a Mexican place we'd heard about.  Lest we forget the theme of our trip, we took the metro to the restaurant and they were closed.  They don't do lunch on weekends.  We decided go somewhere nearby instead and then headed over to the Pergamon Museum.  By the time we were done with that we were able to get back to the hostel, check in, and get a couple hours of sleep before going out for the night.

We'd intended to sign up for the pub crawl sponsored by the same people who did the free tour, but that very much did not happen.  We found our way to a "traditional" (according to the two guys--one sketchy German who kept going on about the evils of capitalism and one friendly American-asked us how we found ourselves there) German pub and then hit up an American-themed restaurant for some late night mozzarella sticks.  We finally got back to the hostel at about midnight and immediately crashed in preparation for the next day.  I think I just barely had time to take off my coat before I fell asleep.

I've decided to make my pictures from this trip (for the most part) black and white.  I think it more accurately captures the mood.

The life-saving cafe that was open at the crack of dawn to serve us breakfast

Remainders of the cappuccino that thankfully kept me up for the next few hours

Inside the restaurant.   We actually weren't the only people there, but I think we were the only ones who hadn't been out clubbing all night.

I left my mark on the table, of course

Emperor William Memorial Church, still in the state it was left in during WWII

A small reminder of Budapest

Path in Tiergarten

Victory Column

Looking down the street we'd just walked up before walking all the way back down the other side

Philharmonic--one of many examples of modern architecture in Berlin

Cool statues with the Philharmonic in the background

This statue is clearly trying to be a balloon animal, but it wasn't exactly successful in being anything other than an amorphous blob.

Sony Center, home of lots of movie theaters and expensive restaurants

Very cool roof above the Sony Center courtyard

With exhaustion came the urge to take ridiculous pictures

These street lights were used in East Berlin while it was occupied by the Soviets and they're still around.  This one means "Stop!", but I think you probably could have guessed that.

This walking green gentleman with the hat means "Go!"

They really, really like bears in Berlin.  Throughout the city there are differently-painted bears like this one, like the Snoopys in Minnesota.

More bears for purchase

First sighting of a piece of the Berlin Wall

Peace sign

The wall was surprisingly short

Basically every inch of the Wall that remains around the city has been graffitied.

Brandenburg Gate.  Hitler changed the statue on top from the original Prussian one, in which the woman was holding a simple iron cross.  He also changed the direction of her gaze, so that she is now staring directly at the French Embassy a few meters away, making sure they don't get up to any funny business.

The square in front of the gate is pretty popular

Holocaust Memorial

Walking through the memorial is incredibly disorienting

Apartment buildings in the background

Our wonderful tour guide telling us about the building behind him.

It's one of the last Nazi buildings remaining in Germany.  It was originally the HQ of the Luftwaffe.  They filmed parts of Valkyrie there too.

Really big globe

Long section of the Berlin Wall

I also didn't know that they decided to use rubber tubing instead of barbed wire at the top because with the tubing there's no way to get a good enough grip to swing yourself over the top of the wall; with barbed wire, there would be something for a rug or towel to cling too and let you climb over.

Trabants were the best cars EVER!  Not only would you have been forced to wait upwards of ten years to be blessed with one during the Communist period, but once you finally received your luxury vehicle, you had lots of noise and bad smells to look forward to.  Now, they rent them to tourists, of course.

Checkpoint Charlie

Gendarmenmarkt

Berliner Dom with the Berlin TV Tower in the background

We stumbled across a street art market and decided to peruse

Hanging German things

Probably not Germans, but that's ok

Purses

This guy was just cool

Berlin TV Tower

Pergamon Museum

Inside

It seemed like in this area more than any other the statues were missing several body parts.

Bigfoot!  We found him!

I don't remember what mythical being this is, but he was very hairy.

This couple was just staring into space.  Perhaps they were also on the bus from Prague and hadn't been able to sleep either.

Oranienstrasse at night

Kate at The Sixties, where we were comforted by mozzarella sticks, even though they came with tartar sauce instead of marinara.  You can't have everything.

The U-bahn stop near our hostel

Metro

Stay tuned for Day 2 of my Berlin adventure!