Ich fahre nach Berlin - Part Two

If you read my blog regularly, you'll see that I've already posted about part of my trip to the Deutsch capital, Berlin (see 16/12). This post covers the second and final half of my trip.

You may have noticed from my first post that one of the most famous elements of Berlin - the Berlin Wall - was conspicuously absent in our whistlestop tour of all the sights. That's because we made sure to cover that on Saturday, my second day in Berlin, braving absolutely freezing wind and fog to do so (woe is me!)

We started off my taking the U-Bahn over to the site of the East Side Gallery. The East Side Gallery is a 1.3 km stretch of the Berlin Wall, which runs along the River Spree and which has been covered in graffiti art by various artists - apparently there are 105 paintings [or at least there were originally - a lot of the graffiti has itself been graffitied], all painted in 1990, the year after the wall finally fell, on its east side.

It's interesting to go and see - despite the fact that what's left of this part of the wall is covered in colourful and meaningful pieces of artwork, and is full of gaps through which you can see the river and everything on the other side, I still found the wall to be very imposing.

We all walk past walls every day and barely bat an eyelid at them or what is in the other side of them. But somehow, I think that the Berlin Wall seems a whole lot more solid than your everyday wall.

I suppose that part of that is knowing what it once represented; what it meant to the people of Berlin. But some of it, I think, is it's height and length, even considering it is much reduced from what it was. It was built to be imposing, after all, and to cause unease to the human psyche, and cause unease it does, by both it's physical presence and, now, also by it's reputation.

From the wall, we headed back into Central Berlin to see Checkpoint Charlie, which was the only official entry point between East and West, marking the entry into the American Sector.

It took us a good half an hour or so to get from the East Side Gallery to Checkpoint Charlie, which really started to give you an idea of the scale of the disruption caused by the wall. But what really put everything into perspective for me was going to see the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer - the Berlin Wall memorial.

This is a 60-metre (200 ft) section of the former border, including an old watch tower, and information about how there used to be a row of houses there, from which people tried to escape in the early days, before being forced to evacuate. The houses were later blown up. 

It was seeing this part of the wall - which felt a lot more real again than the section of the East Side Gallery - and reading about the effects of these evacuations and escape attempts, which really made me think about the wall. It only fell a few years before I was born, so not all that long ago really, and it's something I feel like I should make an effort to know a little more about, especially now having seen it for myself. 

After we'd finished at the memorial we called a halt to our strangely Cold War themed day and stopped off at the department store Ka De We (which reminded me very much of Harrods, and was exceptionally festive inside). We grabbed some dinner and then attempted to go the Christmas market at Alexanderplatz (I say attempted because it was actually closing when we rocked up, but there we go!).

The Christmas Section in Ka De We

Then on Sunday, we went for a meander around the flea market in Mauer Park before going back to Immy's flat to 'festify' it before some of her Erasmus friends came over, which lead to a lovely afternoon/evening of Christmas music, good food, conversation, and glühwein!

And with the end of my Berlin trip, that's basically my limit for cool year abroad stuff for 2013. We're already mid way through December. This week we've had a mini Christmas Dinner at our apartment with some friends, and in the next few days I am going HOME!! It feels like absolutely ages since I was there at the end of October for my 21st, so I absolutely cannot wait to see my family and to get in some Christmas traditions. 

On which note, this will be my last blog post for 2013. I'm pretty pleased with how things are going so far with my year abroad (and with my blog) and I hope to keep it up for 2014! 

So, I would like to wish everybody a Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année. I'll see you all again when I start posting again in the New Year!

A bientôt, Bis später!

Vicky xx

P.S. I feel the need to mention my flatmate, Parisa, here, because as I am writing this, she has just read Part One of my Berlin Blog and announced that she's very disappointed to see that she hasn't been mentioned, and did I not miss her at all? Yes, Parisa, I did :) I even instagrammed all my photos in your honour because I know how much it annoys you when I don't edit them! x

Ich fahre nach Berlin - Part One

So, have you guessed what my second exciting event is yet? The title of today's blog is not in my customary French, but in German, and that's because I visited my uni friend Immy in Berlin this weekend!

I was super excited about going to Berlin. Literally everyone I know who has been there before had told me that it's a really amazing city, and so I have wanted to go there for quite a long time. So what better chance than on my year abroad when a friend of mine happens to be doing her year abroad there?

I'm splitting this blog post into two parts because it's promising to be just as long and photo heavy as my Strasbourg post (see 8/12) which I almost made two parts itself, and that was just for a one day trip!  I arrived in Berlin late in Thursday night, and the air was absolutely thick with fog, which didn't bode very well weather wise, but thankfully we woke up on Friday morning to beautiful (if wintry) sunshine and crystal clear blue skies! 

We got up and got going nice and early to fit in as much as we could. Berlin was the European Capital of Culture in 1988 - for good reason - and it has advanced so much in that time so there was an absolute ton that I wanted to fit into three days! 

We started off by taking the U-Bahn to Alexanderplatz, which is a large public square practically in the middle of Berlin and close to pretty much everything, such as the Fernsehturm Berlin - a TV tower which at 368 metres is the tallest structure in all Germany, and was built by what was at the time, East Germany.

Walking away from Alexanderplatz, we passed Berlin Cathedral, on 'Museum Island'. It is pretty spectacular from the outside, and it seemed a shame not to explore a little more, so we decided to go inside and see what it was like.

For only €4 euros we got to explore most of the Cathedral - from the main section to the crypt, where lots of royalty are buried, and the large dome at the top, which was rebuilt after being bombed twice towards the end of World War Two - ...and wow, was it worth it! Berlin Cathedral is absolutely stunning inside - really, really beautiful. A bit like last weeks Strasbourg post, I shan't try to do it justice myself. As they say, a picture speaks a 1000 words.

Climbing up to the dome made me laugh, as it was the second cathedral I've climbed in a fortnight and anyone who's read my Strasbourg post will know how that turned out last time! Luckily, I didn't embarrass myself this time and made it to the top in one piece, which provided me with my first view over Berlin of the day [the second of which I'll come to later on...]

Once we were done at the Cathedral, we carried on meandering down the road, passing the Neue Wache (Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Victims of War and Tyranny) and Humboldt Univeristat, where Immy is studying this year (and whose building is also pretty spectacular, certainly in comparison to my own glass and chrome building back in Paris). Eventually we reached Berlin's famous landmark, the Brandenburg Gate. 

For those who don't know is a former city gate, a triumphal arch, and the site of a lot of famous by US Presidents during the time of the East/West German split and the Berlin Wall.

Then we grabbed a coffee each (everybody should know the the Christmas Orange Mochas from Starbucks are amazing!) before heading for the site of my second view over Berlin. 

The Reichstag building (history students will know that this is the one which famously caught fire in 1933) has a large glass dome at the top from which you can see most of Berlin, and which Immy booked for us and her friend Emma to go and see.

The dome has a giant ramp inside which takes you to the viewing platform at the top in a massive spiral and which, at certain points, automatically triggers a new commentary on the free audio guide that is available.

It explained a lot about what I was actually seeing of Berlin, and a little of it's history, which was interesting seeing as Berlin is absolutely rolling in it. 

After we finished in the dome (and we sure took our time, because there was a lot to look at) we headed to the German Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe which is just a few seconds away from the Brandenburg Gate.

The memorial basically consists of 2711 concrete blocks of varying heights, which is supposed to (and again, this is all thanks to Wikipedia which I freely admit may be leading me up the garden path):

"produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere... [and] represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason"

I personally found it a bit, well, random, and thought it looked a bit like a graveyard, but there we have it. Ours is not to question why.

After that we went back to Immy's flat to freshen up and grab some dinner, before we headed back out in the evening to meet with her friend Casey at Rosenthaler Platz. We walked from there to the Weinerei Forum, which was effectively a wine tasting bar.

Okay, so the photo isn't wonderful, but the inside of this bar was wonderfully quirky and, so I'm told, very 'Berlin'.

It's effectively a wine tasting bar. You pay €2 to get in and get a glass, and then you can try out and then drink as many of their different wines as you so choose, with helpful recommendations from the bar girl, before giving (at the end of the night) what you deem to be a fair price for the amount of wine that you've consumed while you're there.

Result: the most cost effective few glasses of wine I've had since hitting the continent back in September and a thoroughly enjoyable night out - and that was just Friday! There was a lot more to do in Berlin besides that which I have covered and I planned to do a lot more of that over the following two days...

On which note, the second part of this blog post (covering the said following two days) will be definitely go up by the end of the week, so keep an eye out for that, it will definitely be worth it! 

Until then, tschüss!

Vicky xx