tourists in berlin
by Rach
Berlin, Germany
Finally! We got to see some of The Sights, some of the things Berlin is famous for.
With careful planning we were able to make full use of the rule which states you can hop on and off the trains as many times as you like in two hours so long as you travel in one direction. And so, at my parents’ suggestion, we detoured to the Hauptbahnhof on the way to Alexanderplatz, where we had some business to attend to. What a Grand Central Station! It’s all glass….everywhere. And there are trains coming in at the top and more trains three stories below. Apparently there’s also a huge mall inside, but, being in a hurry, we didn’t stray from the S-bahn platform we alighted onto. That was enough to impress. Plus, we were still marvelling at our previous stop – Friedrichstrasse – that station was bigger than our main station at home, and we knew there was an even bigger one coming. Yes, most impressive.
Another hop and a skip took us to Checkpoint Charlie. Totally touristified. There were guards standing in front of the house, who let you pose with them – for a fee. There was a visa stamping station, where you could have your passport stamped – for another fee. There were gypsies asking if you speak English or German and then thrusting a sign into your face declaring how hungry they were and asking for money. There were big informative posterboards telling the story. There were double-decker tourist busses dawdling past giving the passengers a twenty-second view along the street and groups of tourists looking at what their guides tell them to look at on the ground. But I don’t mind *touristy* – now I can *see* where all those hostage exchanges in the war novels I devoured in my youth took place.
Next stop: Potsdamer Platz. There were almost as many tourists there, just as many busses, even more gypsies and another visa stamping station. We couldn’t quite work out what the fuss was all about – it was a square surrounded by fairly conventional, even boring, buildings. It will be remembered by us as the place we watched a crow swoop down and grab a sparrow, fly off to a nearby lamppost and eat it. Oh, and get visas – the friendly guard gave us eight *gratis* just because there were so many children in one family! He must have known how disappointed the kids were that we were not prepared to pay $5 each just for a stamp!
Our ticket time was used up by now and we walked up to the Brandenburger Tor…taking in the Holocaust Memorial on the way. Unlike any other memorial we have seen, it is a series of rows of concrete boxes of varying heights, ranging from very low to higher than a person. Almost maze-like, it called for a game of hide-n-seek, which was allowed on the condition that it be a quiet respectful game.
If Checkpoint Charlie was totally touristified, there is no description for The Brandenburg Gate. In addition to all the Charlie attractions, here there was a huge variety of street theatre with each performer passing round a hat, horses and carts to take you for a ride, actually all manner of things to take you riding in or on….and all attracting a handsome fee. Even the Berlin Bear, who came and posed himself next to us asked for a tip!
Round the corner was the Reichstag, a FREE attraction – I’m sure the kids would have enjoyed climbing up into the glass dome, but everyone was cold (spring here means hot tshirt weather on Sunday and get-your-thermals-out-on-Friday…and tomorrow we’ll wake to rain dripping on the Bear Cave roof), and so I just raced off for a photo, because I was the only one wearing thermals and hence not freezing.
I caught up with the rest as they walked up the street towards the train station – other days we’d have done the hour long walk to get home, today we took the train. Besides, we couldn’t just stop at a noodle stall on the way back for dinner – we are well and truly back to cooking for ourselves and not even considering eating out. So we had to get home to turn the bockwurst into curry!
Tags: food, history, learning, postcard: Germany, recreation, transport, weather
rayres
Amazing! I lived in Germany for 1991 and visited Berlin after bits of the wall were down but there were certainly still checkpoints and it was a pretty scary place for a kiwi to see! What a difference now!!! I distinctly remember buying CHEAP bread in East Berlin and seeing flamingos for the first time at the Berlin Zoo 🙂
are you still ‘tourists in berlin’?
are you still ‘tourists in berlin?’