Something which is actually quite a challenge when you are a tourist in Berlin, due to all the sights being pretty centred around this event.
However, the first thing to do was have a night out, as the friend who was providing my bed has just started her ERASMUS term there (the semesters start much later in Germany than everywhere else) and there was a big welcome party for those students at a club. I have heard many a story about how fantastic Berlin is for clubbing, and heard even more while there – apparently the clubs stay open basically from Friday night until Monday morning!
Unfortunately it was pretty cold, which made the hour that we had to stand waiting to get in a very very long one! It was a pretty good night though, but I crashed pretty early, by Berlin standards (4h30).
Day 1
Woke up early as per, but the great thing about finally being out of a hostel is that I didn’t feel like I had to get up immediately and go out and do things. In the end we stayed chilling around the flat until midday, when we headed out to visit a kebab stand reputed to be the best in Berlin. Totally plausible, judging by the queue that was there when we arrived:
When we finally got to the front, and got our tinfoil-wrapped kebabs, we were really hungry, but decided to wait just a little longer to get to a nearby park to enjoy it properly. That 5 minute walk was so hard! But in the end, we got there, and surrounded by nature I had my first doner kebab – and it was good! I can’t imagine the ones in Scotland are at all the same – this one had meat that you could identify immediately as chicken, salad with fresh mint, 3 sauces, roasted veg and potatoes and a squeeze of lemon juice right at the end.
This photo doesn’t do justice to the tastiness that was this kebab!
About half way through, this dog came and just sat and stared at us/our food, and it’s a sign perhaps of how hungry I was, but more likely how good this was that I didn’t feel too guilty about continuing to eat it all up in front of him.
Satisfied, we walked around the park, and then around all the local shops and found an indoor market with loads of tasters (we may have been full but they were free!), and were tempted enough to end up buying a selection of stuff for a picnic the next day. I even saw a stall which made me feel more at home in this foreign-country-that’s-not-France:
That evening was the most relaxing since the beginning of the holiday, with a light dinner, chick flick and early night 🙂
Day 2
After another lazy morning, we went to a local park to have the picnic purchased yesterday, even though it was not terrifically warm. Then to the Fleamarket which seems to be the thing to do on a Sunday in Berlin, it was packed! It was really massive though, with so many cool stalls of really diverse stuff – if I lived there I’d love to kit out my flat in all the bits and pieces that you can pick up quite cheap from there.
In the end all we ended up buying was some honey – but not just any honey! My friend chose a normal-ish one, simply with vanilla, so it tasted just like ice-cream, whereas I branched out with blueberry and basil flavour – no idea what i’m going to use it for except to shove under people’s noses and saying “smell this! Isn’t it weird?”.
We then met up with another Edinbugger for cheesecake and chat, which was great – I hadn’t realised how excited I was to see this friend until we met up! We made plans for the next day when my hostess would have uni classes and then parted for me to start sightseeing with the East Side Gallery,
Checkpoint Charlie, these two churches which are replicas of each other and the Ampelmann shop.
The Ampelmann is basically the Green and Red men on lights to cross the road, but have built up to become a bit of a cult phenomenon here, as they are pretty cute with their little hats 🙂 They were originally only found on the lights in East Berlin, but have been spreading into the West side nowadays. In the shops you can buy all sorts of Ampelmann merchandise – I even bought one friend (who had asked specifically that  I buy him something with the logo on it) a set of Ampelmann cookie cutters 🙂 – and there’s even an Ampelmann restaurant!
I really appreciated not being in a hostel that night – it might just be me but being there, and especially on my own and not spending long in a city, makes me feel like you can’t really just relax for an evening, you should always be taking advantage of the time that you have in that city. So tonight, without feeling guilty about it at all (mostly because we were exhausted from the night before) we ate a delicious dinner of roast chicken and veg cooked by my hostess, and then watched “10 things I hate about you” – the ultimate chillaxing kind of evening! 🙂
Day 3
My Berlin sightseeing day with the other Edinbugger began with my very first currywurst, which was so simple but so tasty!
they are not both for me! (although I kind of wish they had been…)
Then we walked around the Tiergarten, talking away and admiring the parts of the zoo that we saw along the route. To get to the Victory Column at the end we had to go through an underpass, which contained this wall which reacted to you walking past, and so had fun with that for a while 🙂
Strangely enough, as we then walked along to the Brandenburg gate, I met the girls who had been on the train with me from Prague – seeing as Berlin is meant to be about 5 times the size of London, this was a bit of a surprise! Moreover, as we headed for lunch, I ran into one of the girls who had been in my room in Prague, and as we chatted away the two others passed behind us!
We had lunch in a really nice cafĂ© after I had taken photos of the Gate, the Jewish memorial and the Reichstag during the daytime. Then went right next door to  frozen yoghurt place (they seemed to be everywhere and despite the cold wind it felt sunny enough to justify it!) . Seeing as mine only had mango, raspberry sauce and granola on it, it felt more like a breakfast than a treat, so we felt perfectly justified to then go to the Ritter Sport chop to create our own chocolate bar – mine: dark chocolate, raspberry and banana pieces and hazelnuts 🙂 (I’d like to point out proudly that this made it all the way home and was not eaten in one go – mostly because I then proceeded to buy a substantial amount of chocolate in this shop and then in Brussels…). This shop is definitely worth a visit if you’re in Berlin – while the “chocolate creation” costs about 4 times as much as just a normal bar, (and you don’t really make it of course you just tell them what you want) it has a “museum” to wander around during the half hour wait plus a cafĂ© and the shop itself of course.
Next was the Hackescher Markt (which I have considerable trouble pronouncing), which has some really cute courtyards and shops to look around, then Alexanderplatz with the TV tower (which is a bit like Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh as you can see it from all over teh city, and always seems closer that it is) and the World Clock.
I met my hostess again to do our tour of the Reichstag government building (by the by – if you are going to do this you need to book 2 days in advance and go though lots of email-y processes to get confirmation that you can go!). We had deliberately chosen a scheduled time to visit which would coincide with the sunset so we could get some good photos. The tour goes around the dome at the top of the building, which is a very picturesque thing in itself:
The thing about Berlin is that the views don’t look that great – the buildings aren’t as pretty as in other cities, or as uniform to give a nice skyline or anything, but on the other hand, no matter which way you look, ther will be at least 3 or 4 landmarks that your handy German-studying friend / free audioguide that comes with the tour can explain the history of for you.
After this, I had a proper german dinner at a proper German restaurant with stuff all over the walls and railway station signs hanging up – very cool atmosphere! I loved that the french students sitting at the table next to us got an upmarket version of the currywurst, with sautĂ©ed potatoes and a little German flag on a cocktail stick. My dinner did not unfortunately come with such a flag, but was still excellent (and I’m glad again that I went for my original, but yes more expensive choice) – marinated beef in a raisin and pumpkin seed sauce, served with apple sauce and potato dumplings (another lot of dumplings – check!) It was very sweet for a main meal, but really, really good!
And I may have had one of the Ritter Sport purchases for dessert…
Day 4
It’s always when I set an alarm that I sleep past 7h30! Today I was going to the Sachsenhausen Labour Camp just outside of Germany with yet another friend. (after travelling alone all that time I now feel so popular all of a sudden :p).
I had seen an advert for guided tours round the camp for only 15€, so I figured that was the way to go, as they meet you in the centre of Berlin and take you on the trains there. Our guide was a really animated and fast-talking New-Zealander, who was really nice, but when explaining the start of the war events on the trains was saying Hitler and Nazis a little too loudly I thought – I saw quite a few Germans just staring at us…
The camp is in what’s now a pretty residential area, so the HQ comes as quite a contrast to the nearby houses. This was the base of all the camps in Germany’s administration of rationing and organisation etc. The Sachsenhausen camp was not in fact an extermination camp, but a labour camp, which means that some of the things you’d expect to see perhaps aren’t here.
On this tour (this list may be upsetting for some):
- The road that all the inmates will have walked down to reach the camp
- The commandants house, from which he would come out to greet the new arrivals
- The A tower with a slogan on the gates along the lines of “hard work = freedom” and a clock on top which has been stopped at the time of liberation.
- Roll call square: twice a day the inmates had to stand here (from 4am in summer and 5am in winter), still with their heads bowed, and if there was a punishment to be carried out at the camp, they’d have 24 hour roll call, within which, obviously, people would die from cold or exhaustion.
- Neutral zone between the roll call square and the wall: if you were seen on this you would be shot. To escape the camp you’d have to cross this zone then trip wire, coiled wire, electric wire a 2 1/2 metre wall and then you’d find yourself in an SS village…
- Special cells for special prisoners, such as Stalin’s son and a would-be assassin of Hitler (I cannot believe how many assassination attempts that man escaped!).
- Boot-testing track : the inmates would have to wear leather boots which were never the right size and run around this track, with its different surfaces, in order to test out the boots.
- The East German memorial dedicated only to the Soviets and forgetting the rest of the victims.
- Execution pit: where some inmates were shot point blank.
- Gas chambers: “rarely” (in comparison to the other camps, but even rarely is too much) used because of the cost.
- Crematoria
- “medical examination rooms”: ie where executions could be carried out without the soldier having to look the inmate in the eye – a pretend doctor would measure the height of the inmate, and behind the ruler which is attached to the wall is a smaller room containing a soldier who points his gun through a small hole positioned just behind the ruler.
- Dormitory with 3 tiered beds which would contain 3 people on each tier.
- Gallows for public executions
- Pathology centre: used for experimentation.
- Mortuary: apparently there used to be graphic photos in here but they were taken away.
- A monument of the Death March: before the liberation all the inmates were taken from the camp and forced to march towards the coast, anyone falling or trying to escape would be shot.
I hesitated about mentioning all of the above, as obviously they are not pleasant facts. But,in the same mindset as the several school trips that we saw going around the camp at the same time as us, they are truthful facts, and ones which should be remembered – for the memories of the lives of the victims, as a reminder of what inhumanity humans are capable of, and as a warning to never let such atrocities happen again.
While the tour was useful in terms of working out the transport and having a guide who knows what and where everything is, I would recommend to anyone who may visit the camp not to use a tour. I felt that the impact of what you are seeing would be greater without someone (especially someone as animated as out guide, nice as he was) talking constantly at you. There were so many bits of information that I would have liked to but didn’t have time to read as he hurried us along.
On my return, I had time to pick up my luggage before my hostess and I met a group of her friends for dinner at an Indian restaurant (my first in ages!) and then to head to the station for my night train to Brussels. I ended up leaving Berlin with an extra bag full of things (mostly food) that I hadn’t arrived with…
lyndsayinrennes 