Day 12-14 Berlin

It's pretty easy to take a train just about anywhere in Europe – much easier than trying to make your way through airports, etc, etc. Within about ten minutes we were out of the hotel, across the street to the Hauptbahnhof and 'checked in', meaning that our Rail Europe Passes and Tickets had been validated at the station.


The passenger trains in Europe all run on an electric system, making it possible to have stations encompassing large covered spaces where the trains can come all the way inside to their platforms. Here's a photo of the inside of the Munich Hauptbahnhof so you can see what we mean:

Everything is available, from candy stands, beer nuts and florists to a huge number of restaurants and fast food stands so travelers can purchase whatever they may want for the journey ahead.

The trains run pretty well on time over here, so you need to be on the platform when your train arrives. Even if your city is one of the end points of the train's journey (as ours was), it doesn't sit in the station for very long. The train was already on its way about 5 minutes after we boarded. And it arrived at every single stop along the way within a minute of the arrival time posted on the route map! The only oddity is that this so-called Inter City Express (or ICE) train made 8 stops along the way and took six hours to get from Munich to Berlin. Sure glad we didn't take "the local" or we might never have gotten here. For all that, we arrived in Berlin on the dot of 6:08 as scheduled, and were in our room at the Grand Hyatt by 6:30!!

We pre-booked two walking tours in Berlin. The first was Monday afternoon, so we did something unusual for this trip Monday morning. We didn't set the alarm! After a very nice "sleep in" and breakfast in the Club Lounge (we are in a Club Room), we decided to do what we always do in a new city, set off on foot to explore. And that's where the fun started.

Most cities we have visited have some identifiable landmark, a tall building, a body of water or a defined downtown. Berlin is absolutely flat, and the buildings are so tightly grouped that even the tallest structure, the Runfunk TV Tower, at almost 300 metres, is rarely visible. Most cities have a "grid" road network, Berlin has ONE east/west artery, and it's in the middle of a park. In this situation, one needs a good map that shows ALL the streets. We discovered ours didn't. For all that, if we had just, less than 50 yards from the front door of the hotel, turned LEFT instead of turning right…….. An hour later, after having gone in a complete circle around the hotel, we finally found a landmark we recognized. The 200 acre Tiergarten, the biggest park in Berlin, and less than a quarter mile due north of our hotel!!! This in spite of the fact Larry was carrying (and using) the compass Jane gave him for Christmas, so yes, we knew which way was north, but that didn't mean we could find the streets on the map! Anyway, all's well that ends well, and once we found the park we were all set. And it is a lovely park to walk in, and easy to forget while walking that you are in a city of 3 million people. It was that quiet. A few pictures;

Larry in front of the Siegessaeule, a monument to victory in the Franco-Prussian wars.

Some two hours after we set out, we found ourselves at the meeting point for our walking tour, in an incredibly busy part of the city, an hour early. We found out from our guide later that the area we were in, the Zoologischer Garten (or Zoo), was actually the "downtown" of what had once been West Berlin and the Bahnhof Station there had been its main rail station. This explained why every hotel, fast food outlet and store chain known to man seemed to be located within 500 yards of the intersection! Not to mention that the very famous Kurfürstendamm, or Ku'Damm, one of the best shopping streets in Berlin. Fortunately we did find Kanzler's, the oldest coffee shop in the city, and spent an hour over coffee and sinfully delicious (and fattening) cake!! We felt very Berliner-ish!!

Our walking tour was a Berlin Highlights tour and it started with our introduction to the Berlin rapid transit system. Unlike Toronto, Berlin has EIGHT subway lines, called U-Bahns, and at least 10 elevated train lines called S-Bahns. The map of the Berlin rapid transit system looks like a berserk Rorshack ink blot gone wild!! One gets a headache just looking at it! The tour started with a five stop S-Bahn ride from what was downtown West Berlin to what was downtown East Berlin and was a trip back in time from the early 21st century to the late 20th century. While much has been improved in the former eastern part of the city, much remains as it was and in many areas East Berlin remains a dark place. Over the course of 4.5 hours our guide Caroline took us through much of the eastern part of central Berlin, past the old museums and government offices. She also took us past many of the "relics" of Berlin's darker Nazi past. Much like guides previously in this trip, she talked freely, and at length, about the Nazi history of Berlin. At one point she made the comment "We recently discovered my Grandfather was in the SS and stationed on the eastern front. There is no way anything good can come of that part of our family history." Here are a few shots from the tour:

The Berliner Dom, the main church of the city

The Brandenburg Gate

A different view of the Holocaust Memorial

The double row of cobblestones marking the path of the Berlin Wall

The Reichstag - seat of German Parliament

After Monday's tour, we were afraid our Tuesday morning Infamous Third Reich Sites tour would be a re-run. Our guide this time was an American from Minnesota who came to Berlin to finish his college degree in 2005 and never left. As an American, his perspective on the history of the period was different from Caroline's in many ways. While there was some duplication, his emphasis was more on the buildings and the physical remains of the Nazi period. For example, even though Hitler's Bunker is no more than a filled in hole in the ground now, he verbally reconstructed the entire Chancellery Building, showing us how big it was and finally ending up, based on the historical evidence and pictures from the time, talking about Hitler's death while standing almost exactly at the spot the bodies were burned. A very strange experience in many ways. Our tour ended, fittingly, at a spot that neatly captures Berlin's recent history; on the former site of Gestapo Headquarters beside the last remaining, untouched section of the Berlin Wall.

By the time the second tour was done we were both about "toured out", our heads swimming in the names, dates and accomplishments, good and bad of Berlin's turbulent history. Fortunately our day ended with a great dinner with new friends. We had met Kerry and Will on the ship and discovered they lived about 20 minutes from us. While we went to Munich they had gone to Prague and then on to Berlin. They met us here at the hotel and we had a very nice three hour dinner in one of the restaurants. All in all a very nice finish to a very busy couple of days. Food shots from our dinner at mesa, the tapas-style German restaurant in the hotel:

A selection of entrees - Berliner Currywurst, Fish, and Lamb chops

Berliner Rouladen - second only to Mom's (this portion is a lot smaller than it looks!)

Desserts - of course!!

Our third, and final, day in Berlin started like our first day, with no alarm clock!! It also started out sunny for a change, but still not real warm. We had no real plans, but at dinner last night Kerry mentioned they visited the food court of a well known German department store KaDeWe (which is short for Kaufhaus des Westens) near their hotel, so we decided to check it out. Which meant tackling the U-Bahn system! Which meant we first had to find the entrance to the system. The closest U-Bahn stop was right around the corner from the hotel and there were lots of signs pointing to it, but we couldn't find the actual entrance stairs!!! We could find the S-Bahn (which is actually under ground in this part of town), but no U-Bahn. Finally we found it, and after finally figuring out the ticket machine (the entire transit system is a POP honour system) we made our way to the food court at KaDeWe. Oh my! Food emporium is more like it. We walked around the 6th floor for an hour and never saw the same place twice. Everything from (Euro) penny candy to a $3,000 bottle of Cognac. In a department store!! In a stroll down one aisle our cholesterol and blood sugar readings went through the roof and we never tasted a thing! The aromas alone were fattening. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures, so you will just have to trust us on this one!!!

After extricating ourselves from the food emporium we once again tackled the U/S-Bahn system and took ourselves back over to the eastern side of the city. We had read, and heard, that no visit to Berlin is complete unless you take a boat tour on the Spree River, and the best ones are on the east side. This one started beside the Berlin Cathedral and we can now say that we agree this is a must-do. The cruise took us through much of the east side and then through the "government district" on the west side, and things really do look different from a boat. Some pictures:

How civilized - wine and non-alcoholic beer on the cruise boat...

Along the  riverside in the Nikolai-Viertel (in old East Berlin)

Larry and the Reichstag Building

A beach bar - the only place we didn't get to on this trip

As we type, we are back in our hotel room and packed up for our return train trip to Munich tomorrow and our flight home on Friday. This has been quite the trip and we have both commented that while we left home two weeks ago today, it feels like we have been gone a month. We don't know if we will get time for another post, but in case we don't, we hope you have enjoyed our trip as much as we have.