The train from Amsterdam to Berlin was about 5 hours long. When we arrived in Berlin we found our way to my Uncle Klaus’ apartment. Klaus was letting us stay with him while we were in Berlin. We were really excited because after being in so many hostels for so long it was nice to stay in a home. We were also excited because Klaus drove tour buses and knew all of the best tourist stops away from the downtown tourist districts. Klaus said he would take us out on Sunday so we had all day Saturday to wander on our own.

Holocaust Memorial

Saturday afternoon we went to the Brandenburg Gate to start our free tour. We were shocked to see our Irish friend Amanda whom we had met in Brussels a week before. It was a complete fluke that we ran into her for the tour. Our tour guide was really cool, but unfortunately due to the large volume of people on our tour ( forty people) we felt we couldn’t really get to know him or his personal insights which was unfortunate. We saw German Parliament which had a giant clear dome that you could watch people walking inside of. The clear dome was supposed to represent the transparency of government after Hitler’s dictatorship. Our next stop was the controversial Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial was almost 5 acres of 2,711 rectangular concrete slabs arranged on a grid. The memorial was based on a Jewish Cemetery ( which we later see in Prague). The concrete slabs ranged from a few centimetres to 2meters in height. The memorial made you feel so many different things depending on your own personal views and interpretations. I felt like I was staring at physical bar graphs of murder while Gavin saw rows of concentration camp barracks. Afterwards we went to a plain parking lot which had a simple information sign telling the reader that it was the location of Hitler’s Bunker. After the bunker we went onto see a preserved section of the Berlin Wall, behind which were the preserved foundations of the former Gestapo headquarters.

Portion of the Berlin Wall

We were then shown the site of the famous Checkpoint Charlie, where a tank standoff between West and East Berlin came precariously close to heating up the Cold War. It is now jokingly referred to as the Disneyland of Berlin, as an entirely fabricated replica of the checkpoint has been built, along with German actors in American uniforms you can take photos next to. The tour ended at Museum Island, an island in the middle of the city populated with, shockingly, many museums.

At the end of our walking tour, we bought tickets to the pub crawl that night with Amanda, and agreed to meet up later at the beginning of the tour. We took a short break back at Klaus’s place before heading to the club crawl. We went to four pubs and the Matrix nightclub, which was underneath a bridge. We had fun, especially when running into an old friend, but we decided that we had enough evidence to dismiss clubs all over the world as sweaty, expensive and obnoxious places not worth our time. We would rather go to a quiet place for a drink to get to know people than a loud expensive club. That being said we got home at 4am.

The next day, Klaus had time to show us around some of his favorite sites. He drove us to the impressive Olympic Grounds where we climbed up a large tower overlooking the nearby stadium which was hosting a soccer game. There was also an exhibit about the 1936 Olympics and naziism. Next, he showed us a great red clock tower, the Grunewaldtrum, dedicated to Wilheim I. Afterwards we ate lunch at a beer garden in the nice weather. We then toured the grounds of Potsdam, the city of German Kaisers and the home of their most famous palaces. Klaus was an excellent tour guide, and had plenty of amusing local anecdotes.
The next day we returned to where the walking tour had begun and explored some of the sites we had been shown during the tour in greater detail. Upon reaching Museum Island, we visited the Pergamon Museum. The museum had impressive permanent exhibits and collections from Greek and Middle Eastern antiquity, including structures and massive gateways rebuilt within the confines of the building. The most impressive exhibits were the gates of Ishtar and the fully reconstructed Pergamon Altar.
This marked our final day in Berlin. We said goodbye to Klaus, and boarded yet another train towards the city of Prague, which we had heard so much about from our fellow travellers.