Tried to walk out to the East Side Gallery to start the day. It's never a good sign when you're walking along the street and you don't see any other tourists at all, and instead it feels like you're just walking along the side of the highway. I was actually going in the right direction, but I think that not many people go out there for some reason, and those that do are on those crappy tour buses. So it's not actually a "gallery" at all, just another section of the Berlin Wall that still remains, only longer and in better condition, and some artists have painted murals all along it. There was a few good ones along the way.
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| Berlin Wall artwork. |
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| More Berlin Wall. |
On the way back I was minding my own business, then all of a sudden someone brushes my arm and I hear a woman gasp, then look back as some Asian woman drops her camera on the ground. She's looking at me mad as if I've just taken the camera from her hand and thrown it, but I think the more likely scenario is she was grabbing it out of her bag and swung around without looking. I just shrugged and kept walking. It's an interesting issue though I think, even if I'd done it on purpose or it was my fault, what options does the other person have. They chase you down and then what ?
I took a train out to this Designer Outlet Berlin place to have a look around. It was freezing cold and I was still sick from the weekend, so I ended up buying a jumper I didn't really need and didn't really want to carry around for the next two weeks in warm weather cities. I didn't think of any of that at the time. Coming back I got off outside the city at the Olympiastadion - home of the 1936 Olympic Games and final of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. They offered a self guided tour so I thought I might as well take that while I was there.
They handed me some map with a bunch of numbered circles and a dotted line, which I figured was the tour. I went to the first point which was walking into the stadium and down to the front of the seating area. After that it seemed like you were supposed to walk all the way around the outside of the stadium and past some practice grounds. However there was no signs and noone else seemed to be doing anything other than hanging around at the stadium entrance so it was very confusing. I decided to go off and see where it ended up anyway, after a long walk out onto a street and past some horse training yards I made it to this bell tower. I wasn't even sure if it was part of the tour but it seems that it was and it was pretty cool. The elevator takes you most of the way up, then you have to walk up a few flights of stairs yourself while dealing with the wind. There's a pretty good view from the top, of the stadium and of Berlin to a lesser extent.
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| The Olympiastadion. |
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| Inside the stadium. |
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| The view from the bell tower. |
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| One of the reasons it's called a bell tower. |
After getting closer to Berlin I walked down Kurfurstendamm which is where most of the shops are. They also had some "buddy bear" exhibition where they have one bear for each country assembled on the footpaths. I also saw Kaufhaus Des Westens aka KaDeWe which is the German equivalent of Harrod's in London. On the train back to the hotel I saw an advertisment for a video game museum which sounded great, only it was going to close for the day in about 30 minutes, so that was a bit annoying I didn't see it sooner.
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| The Australien bear. |
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