Berlin Sights

Berlin has treated me well. The hotel I’m staying at has an indoor pool, which provided some nice quiet down time from the city. Every morning started with a workout and a swim.

Today we ventured off first to see the Brandenburg Tor (Brandenburg Gate). The gate is quite grand, and like all other tourist sites, filled with tourists and random locals dressed up as Darth Vadar, Stromtroopers, and Batman hoping to make a few Euro here and there.

The gate was once a part of a series of gates that entered Berlin. Built in the 1730s, the gate today stands as one of the most iconic monuments in Berlin and Germany. The gate has received many famous leaders throughout history. During the Cold War, this gate was situated in East Germany. The gate is also featured heavily in international media when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. 

The gate itself is very closely located to the Reichstag, the Parliament of Germany. The building, once located in East Germany, is spectacular! The glass dome in the centre stands out from the dark bricks. In front of the Parliament is a huge field, which once again, filled with tourists and oddly enough, a high school cheerleading team practicing their routine. U-G-L… oops.. I mean… YOU GO GIRLS!

Completed in 1894, it housed the German Empire Parliament and then the Germany Nazi Government till 1933, when a large fire heavily damaged the building. Post war, the building sat as German Democratic Republic (GDR) found another home to house its government, and West Germany relocated its capital to Bonn. The building was fully restored in 1990, when Germany unified. Today it houses the Germany Parliament. 

The glass dome at the top gives you a 360 degree view of Berlin skyline, unfortunately we did not go in... 

The most drama came from having lunch today by the Reichstag. It was a cafeteria like café, with outside and inside seating. The weather was fantastic so we sat outside to have our meal. Now, I am all for having birds chirping around, hopping by my feet trying to catch the crumbs of my meal, however, I am NOT ok when I see Mickey Mouse parading around the patio of a restaurant/café!! Today my peripheral vision did not fail me. As I caught sight of the creature, I immediately raised my feet to the chair beside me and let out, what I can remember, a very masculine AHH! After moving to another table, a bee kept interrupting my meal with sporadic landings on my food! This was the last straw!

I stood up, got away from the table, and asked Matt to kindly (I think) finish his meal so we can leave! Call me high maintenance, but I do NOT enjoy dinning with mice and bees unless I’m at a Tea Party at Disneyland!

We made out way east, back into the Museum Island area, where we walked past the Natural Museum of Berlin, and as well, the Berlin Cathedral.

Our afternoon was then spent walking back to the Museum Island, where we stopped at the DDR Museum. However, since the lunch ended abruptly for me, I ended up buying a wurst and bun from a street vendor that wore the whole cart on his body!!

The museum showcases the lifestyle of East Germany under Communist rule. The layout of the place was tight, but everything was very interactive and gave me a great sense of what life was like.

I got to sit in a Trabi, the only brand of car that people could buy in East Germany. I got to feel the clothes that they wore which were all made of synthetic material because cotton was scarce.  What was also really neat was being inside a re-make of a typical apartment suite at that time. Having said that whole experience was pretty depressing. I did not realize just how bad the people in East Germany had it. The stories about them attempting to escape, people could not contact relatives who lived in the West. This makes me appreciate even more so than ever, the free, democratic country that I call home, Canada!