Berlin

I thought Berlin was an amazingly rich and interesting place to visit. We were there for three nights, two of which were at a former monastery turned youth hostel, the third at the decadently luxurious Steigenberger, which came as something of a relief as something licey, something bitey was eating me alive and Jannie was complaining about the 75 stairs and (gasp) no lift.

Our Mexican friends, Alex and Claudia, were in Berlin at exactly the same time as us and we ran into them again on the train from Prague, although there was a scramble for the seats in the sole first class carriage and we ended up sitting in someone else's reserved seats by mistake. Alex and Claudia fixed the problem by removing the reserved indicators, thereby ensuring that their seats were "free". We followed suit as a joke just before the rightful ticket holders rolled up to claim their seats. In the Mexican stand off that ensured, Alex and Claudia held their ground and won the seats, while we went to the other end of the carriage (after all, the aggrieved party were Aussies too).

Anyway, there was so much to do in Berlin and we only scratched the surface in the time we had. I don't believe that we would of run out of new things to experience if we had been there a month.

On the first day we went to the Technical Museum (which is enormous). War is so tied into German history that the museum sort of mirrors the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, for example with the intact (Australian) Lancaster bomber in Canberra and the crashed remains of another Lancaster bomber in Berlin. There were WW2 rockets, jets, fighters and trains, all along with suitcase making displays, brewery displays, and the trains, oh the trains. I guess about fifty locomotives and train carriages are all on display, including one used to transport people to the concentration camps that you could walk into.

Anyway, we left only when we were exhausted and there were still more things to see. After drinks that night with A&C in a Mexican place at Potsdamer Platz, we went the next day with them to the Hamburger Bahnhoff which is now a modern art museum for yet another massive museum experience and some really excellent modern art. There were extensive exhibitions on Beuys and Warhol and then a selection from their permanent collection on a theme of deconstructionism in a series of galleries the size perhaps of Central railway station in Sydney. After seeing the Biennale in Sydney, it was so very refreshing to see modern art that was good. We left again with sore feet, but in excellent spirits. A barrage of deconstructive art leaves one seeing the humour in all things.

So the end effect was that or five star Steigenberger experience was one of recuperation and to finally have a Good Nights Sleep. The next day we spent in travel, meantime wishing we had done these things as well, as we trained it to Frankfurt to catch the plane to Dublin...