Day 1
We woke up early, called a cab to leave Paris to Berlin. After about 1 hr 20 mins of the super fast trip, we arrived at Berlin. Berlin is a very nice place, it was colder than everywhere we’ve been, but it was good because we needed to cool down and travel without sweating. We started to look around to find ways to get back to our hotel. One guy helped us out and took us to the right place even though he did not speak English. We got to our hotel, Best Western Express. It was about 10am but they let us check in because the room was ready. The hotel staff was making fun of me for using my credit card. He told me that not many people in Berlin uses credit card, only American does that. Yeah, America is a country built on debts and credits. There are so many people with multiple credit cards, multiple loans. That’s why we got the financial crisis in 2008 because they allow people who can’t afford things to buy them. After checking in, we tried to wash our clothes at the hotel but couldn’t because it was too expensive, each article of clothing (socks, shirt, underwear…) costs about 6 Euros. We ended up doing it at a local “Waschsalon”.
We got out of our hotel about noon. It was perfect weather, clear, blue sky, sunny, about 60 degrees F. we ate Turkish doner near Alexanderplatz, I think. It was delicious but too much. We couldn’t finish. Only 3 euros for a huge doner. If you try them, be sure to choose different sauce. Food was very cheap in Berlin compared to other places. In addition, Berlin is very tourist friendly and there are lots of free stuff to help tourists (free map, information desks everywhere, guide standing in front of metro stations for directions…). Among those free stuff, the best tour in Berlin is a free tour around the city. If you don’t have lots of time to spend in Berlin like us, this is the best way to explore the city. Basically, it’s a free tour of your chosen language. The tour guide takes you around the city to about 10 or so different locations and explains the history behind each place. The tour lasts about 4 hours and at the end, you can tip the tour guide depending on what you think about his knowledge and ability to guide you through the city. I thought it’s the best way for an organized tour since the tour guide gets paid by his ability. There are lots of other tours where you pay a fixed amount up front and there’s a tour guide taking you around. Often time, it’s very boring since he/she says the same thing all the times and doesn’t seem to want to do his/her job. This is completely different, the tour guide gets tips at the end so he will try to do his best. Our tour guide was Jeff, a Dutch but spoke perfect English. He was also very funny, knowledgeable, and made the tour interactive and entertaining. I recommend this tour for everyone. The tour starts at the Starbucks coffee in front of the Brandenburg Gate. We used metro to “Brandenburger Tor”. The metro system in Berlin is very good and it uses an integrity system. You don’t need to insert tickets to enter. You just need to buy ticket and then validate it with a machine before you go. Of course, you can just walk in without buying the ticket. However, at rush hour, there’s usually a metro employee walking around checking for your ticket. I think there’s a big fine if you don’t have your ticket validated. I think this is a really good way to run a metro system. In fact you will save a lot of money hiring employees sitting at the gate of each station all the time. It’s also very efficient to go in and out during rush hour, there’s no bottleneck.
So our tour started. Jeff, the tour guide, was awesome. He took us to all the main attractions and explained the history behind each one. I’m not gonna write the history about each attractions but it was very informative and I learned a lot from that free tour. A lot of the information were straight from text books. Some of the jokes were related to current news event and some jokes were about the French and German rivalries in English. If you are not fluent in English or you don’t know much about French history, you will not get some of the jokes. So we went to the Brandenburg Gate first, then the Parliament building. I was impressed by the glass dome design on top of the building. Below the glass dome was the work place of politicians. The design of the dome allows people to look straight down to see the politicians. Also, the politicians can look up to the people. It symbolizes Germany’s transparent democracy. Very cool idea and great looking building (I regret not having time going up there… explained in Day 2).
Next we went to the Memorial of the murdered Jews and Hitler’s bunker. Berlin is not a very rich city but it’s very rich in history. It’s also very proud of its history and does not hide it. The memorial is right next to the Brandenburg Gate, in the city center close to the Parliament building. This allows tourists, working class, politicians… everyone to see it.
In contrast, Hitler’s bunker is now a parking lot with some apartments around it. There’s not even a sign saying that it’s Hitler’s bunker. Again, the locations are also very symbolic. Next we headed toward the Berlin Wall, Check Point Charlie. After that, we took a break and went to a local coffee shop. Immediately after that, we went to see the tax building, the main Cathedral, museum islands, the square where there are churches built by the French and German. We arrived in front of Humbolt University where the book burning took place. Afterward, we went to some other places that I don’t recall the name. At the end, we finished up at the Art Gallery building. I loved this tour. I got a lot of useful information out of it and some great places to eat so we tipped him well.
For dinner, we went to this local restaurant called biergarten. We had some sausages and beer. German sausages were delicious and its beer was great too. My girl friend enjoyed Beck’s lemon while I tried out some wheat beer. We headed back to our hotel to take shower. We tried to go to see the Parliament building afterward but everyone was tired. We all passed out on our bed at around 9pm.
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