p o r t h o: EU Holiday, August 29 (4:50am From Paddington)

Another early start, this time for a flight to Berlin. I think around 5am I got up, as I had to take a bus down to Paddington station, then a train to Heathrow airport in time for a flight around 7:30am. Not sure why I booked it quite so early. Since noone else is up at that time of day besides garbage collectors and the people operating the buses and trains, I made it to Berlin without any delays for once.

Berlin is one of the few major European airports to not have a connecting train line, but I think this is because they are about to replace it with a different airport. I took the bus to downtown Berlin and decided to have another go at carrying all of my luggage around until hotel checkin - this time without rain at least. I tried to pack slightly lighter this time, so it was a little bit easier to handle, but not much.

The bus dropped me off just outside the Fernsehturm which is a massive TV tower, not sure why they thought the middle of the city was a good place to put it. It looks ok, but I don't think it is a tourist attraction that you can ride to the top, or bungee jump off. I walked west from there down Unter Den Linden, a street that basically runs the length of Berlin. Just the usual mix of souvenir shops and other stuff, as well as a couple of museums along the way. But at the end of the street is the famous Brandenburg Gate, which is a little bit like the standard "triumphal arch" you see everywhere, but with a few more columns. Also it probably has a bit more historical background to it.

No Wow/Telephone Radio Germany.

Altes Museum perhaps.

DDR Museum maybe.

Brandenburg.

Over the other side of the Brandenburg Gate the street keeps going for miles, all the way through the park (Tiergarten). I took a detour north to checkout the German Parliament building called Reichstag. They have an interesting looking glass dome at the top which you can go into, but I found out later that you have to register in advance with passport and contact details, then they let you know after a couple of weeks if you won a spot for your requested date. Back to the park then, and I could see a large column down the other end, the Siegessaule. It didn't look far away, so I decided to try and keep walking down there. The distance was deceiving though, and it ended up being two or more kilometres in each direction. Add to that the rain started up just as I made it there, and maybe it wasn't worth it just to see another gold statue on top of a column.

For the German people.

This guy looks familiar...

Siegessaule.

I noticed signs for Checkpoint Charlie on the way to the hotel so made another quick detour. Unlike in Brussels the streets of Berlin are 1) logical 2) well signed and 3) run in straight lines, so it's almost impossible to get lost. It's a pretty crap name for a landmark, but it's basically a small box where a USA/Russia checkpoint at the Berlin Wall used to be. Near the checkpoint they had one of those self serve bread stores, kind of like a "Bread Top". In Germany the word for bread is back I suppose, so these stores have funny sounding names like "Back Factory", but they had some tasty stuff. The must have forgotten to appoint a head bee guy though, because bees had overrun the store and they were flying around all of the breads and donuts, pretty much anything with sugar or icing.

Leaving the American sector.

The hotel was Wall Street themed for some reason, maybe because it was on Wall Street (called Wallstrasse in German). Because of that the rooms had really cool dollar bill carpet. Having the bed in the way kind of ruined it. I went back out again in the evening to visit the holocaust memorial. It was very minimalistic, just many rows of blocks of different heights, not sure if they had anything written on them. Not far from Checkpoint Charlie they had something called Topography Of Terror which was this outdoor timeline display of how the war developed. There was also a part of the Berlin Wall just above it, which is now quite crumbled.