This morning I got up kinda early to get a full day of sight seeing in. The first thing I did was got to the Reichstag (The German Parliament building). The lonely planet guide to get there early to line up as it became popular during the day. Then I found out that they now had a registration system where you have to book a time slot and all of the slots were booked until 1pm. So that was pretty crap because I wanted to do a walking tour that started at 11am. So I had a wander around the grounds and took a photo:
while I wondered what I was gonna do for an hour and a half by myself before the walking tour started. Real cool travelling by yourself eh? I decided that I would sign up to the 3pm slot as it was free of charge so I didn't have to show up if I made other plans. When I was waiting in line they started handing cards out to the people waiting and speaking in German, when they got to me they asked if I wanted to go up now, win! It was really good. There was an audio guide thing that told you to stop and look out over the city while it described the various buildings you could see. The actual structure was pretty cool too as it had a chimney thing:
that is used to let excess heat out and a mirror system to reflect light down into the chambers to reduce the need for lighting. This also means that the ceiling is made of glass so you can look down on the politicians doing their thing:
The idea being that the politicians can look up at the people they are working on behalf of.
After that I went to do the walking tour. The first thing we saw was the Brandenburg gate:
Then we walked up the road to check out the Holocaust memorial:
Which I found was very hard to take a photo of. It would probably look cool from one of the buildings around it but none of them would let me up. Again, there are not really words to describe it, "I really liked it" seems like a pretty aweful thing to say but it was a really good memorial (in a bad way). Wandering around inside it was pretty crazy as it got really deep in the middle (all of the stones are about the same level when you look across them but the ground falls away). I was in desperate need of someone to talk to and I hit a few people up but while everyone was polite they didn't seem to want to talk to anyone. I can't fathom why someone would wanna walk around by themselves. Weird. I gave myself a wee pep-talk to stop being so negative (I really probably was starting to go a bit mental). We also went to stand above the bunker where Hitler killed himself. That was a really weird feeling, knowing that such a poingant moment in history happened beneath our feet. There is just a carpark there as well as no one really wants to memorialise the dude, fair enough too. I also found this along the way:
Apparently in Germany they have statues of people killing lions as opposed to statues of regular lions, and this:
I think collecting pictures of amazing old buildings with scaffolding on them is my new thing. This one is a particularly good example. We ended our tour on "Museum Island" beside this amazing Cathedral:
Where our guide also told us an interesting story about the mayor of East Germany and how he basically got stressed out at a press conference and made some rash statements that started the ball rolling to remove the wall. I tried to remember more but I failed. Should really look it up again sometime.
At the end of the walking tour I saw a tuk tuk advertising the Blue Man Group so I decided to go hunting for them to find out if I could go to a show. I found a ticket office and found there were shows at 6pm and 9pm every day. I decided to wait until tomorrow for two reasons.1: So that then I would go on the pub crawl tonight (to rule out the chance of being hungover travelling to Munich the day before Ocktoberfest) and 2: So that I could hunt some unsuspecting person and recruit them to come to the show with me.
I didn't really know what to do next so I had a look at my map. I wanted to go to the east side gallery (longest contiguous part of the wall still standing), and also go up the tower. But the gallery was a long way away (approx 1 hour according to google). I wanted to do as much today so that I didn't have to get up early tomorrow after the pub crawl (you may be thinking "why the hell don't you just scrap the crawl?" well I know from experience that people on pub crawls are out to meet people and have a good time so its pretty much just medication for me, without it I might go insane). Then I realised if I was by myself I could always just run. There are not many people I know that hold the same opinion that running is generally the same as walking except you get places faster so this was an advantage of travelling alone, I finally found one! So I set out. I went past the Jewish museum because it apparently had cool architecture or something but it looked boring from the outside (may inside was better). So I ran on. I wasn't really dressed appropriately though in jeans and a T-shirt. I also didn't want to be a sweating mess when I got to the wall as that would just get one of my precious few T-shirts soaked in sweat so I just went at a slow trudge, stopping occasionally to keep my body temperature low. It was all very technical and calculated.
I got to the east side gallery and it was cool. Largest outdoor art exhibition in Europe as well I think.
It was weird to find some interesting graffiti too:
I wonder why the hell that was there. Its not like we had anything like the Berlin wall happen in NZ.
I realised I still had time to go up the Furnsehturm (TV tower) before the pub crawl started. It was easily seen from everywhere so I ran straight towards it and found it no problems. It is 368m tall and was built by The Soviets to prove the Easts dominance in the cold war. Unfortunately the soviets couldn't complete it by themselves and had to get the Swedish in to finish the job. Couple of pics including one of the construction of a replica of a palace that stood in that spot back in the day:
I then went back to the hostel and grabbed some tasty kebab action on my way to the meeting point for the pub crawl. It was a bit of a sausage fest but it was pretty fun. We went to a place called "Matrix" at the end which had about 4 sets of DJ rooms, it was huge. All were playing awful music. I didn't really drink much so that was good. Still had a good time so I think that proves I'm not an alcoholic right? I was successful in the primary goal of talking to people and I was also successful in my secondary goal of finding someone keen to go see the Blue Man Group with me, Kat, a Doctor from Bristol/Bath. Horray!
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