Berlin, Dresden, Wolfsburg and Koln.
So we learned a few things in Berlin. The first full day in Berlin we went to Sachsenhausen Concentration camp. It was located in the villiage of Orianienburg, a bit outside of the city. The camp was the first large scale concentration camp built, originally for political prisoners, but eventually for all of the unfortunate people who the Nazis imprisoned. It was used as a model camp for the design of other camps in a triangular shape. Interstingly, parts of it were used by the communists after the war to imprison their opponents as well. Not much of the original camp remains, but alot of it has been converted to museum exhibits. We spent more than half a day here and we weren’t able to see it all. Parts of it were really moving on what those people had to endure. When we got back to town we did some aimless tourist wandering through Potsdam Platz and the Sony Center, where Hitlers bunker was, an erie Holocaust memorial, the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag.
We ended up heading out for a few beers at an interesting pub called Kaffe Burgher with a couple of Aussies, Fi and Damien that we met at the hostel we were staying at. It was a rocking fun night.
The next day we took a bike tour through Berlin by this Free Berlin Tour company. Now we were no longer aimless tourists, as the tour was very well done, saw a lot, and quite a blast. We highly recommend it if you’re in Berlin. Afterwards we had a falafel and schwarma at a place called Da Da, which were very good as well. We then were luckily in the last group of the evening admitted into the Reichstag, which is the seat of German parliment (aka the Bundestag). It has a really cool clear dome at the top and the view in the evening was pretty cool.
The next day we took a train down to Dresden, because some Germans we met in Kuressaare recommended the town. We first went to the Transparent VW factory where they produce the Phateon. The factory is pretty neat, with glass and hardwood floors (from canada!) everywhere and you can see a portion of the Phateon assembly. They also have some exhibits with a full car simulator. We wandered around aimlessly in the afternoon. I think this will become a re-occuring theme for us. The hostel we were staying at, Lollis, was quite nice, especially with a fully decked out kitchen, and had these rickety old bikes we were allowed to use. We took them and biked around the old town following a walking tour booklet. We were mostly just randomly shooting around, trying to avoid pedestrians and cars. Did we mention the brakes didn’t really work? But we had a great time and got to see a lot of the beautiful city of Dresden before it got too dark.
The next morning we decided to hang out in Dresden for another day and check out the more artistic/bohemian Neudstadt region of the town on the North side of the Elbe river. We ventured into the art passage, which was a cool area in a maze of courtyards with interestingly painted buildings and many little stylish stores. Sarah found herself a stylish new purse. We mostly hung out in Dresden for the rest of the day, enjoying a more relaxing day. Later in the evening, we went out for desserts and a search for a locally made beer (I’m now trying to keep a journal of beers I am trying).
The next day we had a long day of travel as we took the train back up through Berlin and on to Wolfsburg at the early hour of 7am. We went to visit, yes, another VW factory. We went to the Autostadt in Wolfsburg. It’s set up like a disney-world-ish theme park with the different brands and museums. It really wasn’t all that spectactular, except that we had made reservations to go on the factory tour. The tour (done in english) went through the plant where they make most all of the VW Golfs and GTI’s. It was freaking awesome, as they toured us around the plant (which at 6.4 sq km, is bigger than the entire municipality of Monaco) in this train like thingy just meters from all these golfs. I’m pretty sure I looked retarded as I was staring at all the cars and production process.
We then hopped the train again that evening on towards Koln or Cologne depending on what language you speak. They have a gigantically massive gargantuan cathedral right outside the train station called the Dom. We then wandered around aimlessly again like tourists. Today we went to the Chocolate factory, where we got lots of chocolates and they make Lindt chocolates. We then wandered around town and found a few Brewhouses and sampled their fine wares, hopped back on the train and made it to Amsterdam.
Tags: Travel
