Some fake snow, lots of walking, and a cabaret...Ah, Berlin

Berlin Excursion -
Saturday, November 6, 2004

Excerpts from my travel journal:

I got lots to catch you up on, so let's get to it, shall we? Okay, so on Saturday, I still didn't sleep all that well, but definitely better than on Friday. No working out for me though - it was straight to breakfast, which was extremely crowded. The weekend crowd at this hotel is apparently not to be underestimated! I ate my breakfast crammed in this little window-facing bar - I didn't realize or remember that I could have just gone and sat out at the lobby area under the aquarium...but I did remember that the next day, you betcha! So I was thinking about doing teh Original Berlin walk, which is extraordinarily similar to the Original London Walks. But I just decided, nah. So I decided to first go and see the Checkpoint Charlie area and museum. I went and used my Welcome Card 72-hour rail pass for the first time, hoofing it all the way to the AlexanderPlatz's distant hidden U-Bahn station. It is odd that you don't actually have to swipe through any gates to use the German subway or S-Bahn system. You just have to have a ticket in case someone asks you for it, and if you don't have one, you pay an on-the-spot fine of 40Euros. I don't know, if I lived here, I think I'd take my chances because the entire time I've been here, I've not once been asked to show my pass. Dammit, someone aske me to show it to them.....(so to speak)! :-) Anyways, I arrived at some station a few blocks north of Checkpoint Charlie, so I walked. And then there I was, at Checkpoint Charlie, which is now just a guard shack in the middle of the road, and not even the real one, since the real one was taken down shortly after the wall came down. Guess they didn't want that reminder. And that's what makes the museum in the "Haus at Checkpoint Charlie" very cool. It reminds you of what Berlin is trying to forget, and how unbelievably crazy the idea is that this city was literally walled in from East Germany and East Berlin. Reading and seeing the lengths people would go to escape to West Berlin was almost unbearable. Very scary. And emotional. And seeing how Berlin used to appear compared to now is amazing. Berlin really has gone out of its way to rid itself of that past. A short walk took me to a last long stretch of wall that still stands exactly where it was originally, about 200m worth of it. Next to it is a display called the Topography of Terror, and which talks about the rise of Nazism and the farcical nature of it, as well as rebellions and others who tried to stop Hitler.

I then went to Potsdamer Platz, which is pretty much one of the hearts of Berlin in terms of things to do and what's going on. This weekend the Austrians had set up shop and had put in a ski/sled hill, lots of Alpine villages selling food, tours, knick knacks, etc, displays, music...it was all pretty cool, and very crowded. I did buy a waffle with sugar on it though. Yum. I then walked over to see what the Sony Center was all about. It is pretty cool looking, but it's just a really big open area with expensive shops and restaurants at the bottom and Sony's Europe HQ on top. It actually looks much like Citywalk's main center, a lot. I chilled there for a bit, but decided to move on eventually, walking over to the Musical Center area, at which the Berlin Philharmonic is located, which is a crazy gold building. I just kept walking around and realized, it's time to go somewhere else, so I went back to the Potsdamer Platz U-Bahn and took it to the stop right before AlexanderPlatz. From there, I could go to the Nikolai Viertel, which is a recreation of how Berlin looked in ye olde medieval times. It's very reminiscent of how Frankfurt and Munich have their old areas set up. It's nice. Then I just decided, it's time to sleep because I'm tired. After all, I had tickets to see the cabaret and the Wintergarten Theater that evening. I had asked the concierge to get them for me, and he did! It was sweet, how that works. Anyways, I got a few hours of siesta, then decided I didn't feel like going outside to look for a place to eat by myself, again, as it was even raining, sort of. I was just lazy. But I got room service, and it was good. Until I wheeled the cart outside and let the door close behind me, locking me out. That was embarassing, as I had to go to the front desk and have someone escort me up as a security measure. Great. Anyways, I got a late start off to the Wintergarten, which was my bad. I didn't realize how long it would take to A) get to an U-Bahn station and B) travel via U-Bahn to the Schoneberg area where the WG is. But I got there 10 minutes before start, got sat at my table (there were 4 others there at my table for 7), and thus proceeded to enjoy a great show, which was a musical troupe who played happy folk music, or sometimes sad, moody type music accompanied by a singer, which then was sometimes accompanied by amazing acrobatics. Very cool show. I imagine it was similar to what a Cirque de Soleil show would be like. And after that, I hightailed it home to go to the bathroom, then I eventually went to sleep, and then amazingly, I slept in till about 8:30am! Crazy.

Checking out more of Berlin

Click here to view an easy-to-see-all-the-pictures-at-once slideshow (~2.1 MB) of the images below.

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