Beer Garden....mmmmmFRIDAY
We took Friday off work - the day began crazily early, at 4.00am! We had to walk to find a night bus to get us to the meeting point for our tour. We then travelled to Stansted airport (approx an hour out of London), then flew to Berlin. We arrived to a sweltering 30 degree heat and soaked every minute of it up - the weather was just perfect for the whole weekend, heaven for the flagging vitamin D levels.
We knew we had flown in to Germany immediately - as we saw a guy at the airport with one of those classic german moustaches - you know the ones that are greased and rubbed together at the ends to form a straight point! Wish we'd asked him for a photo with us!
Us at Berlin Stadium
Jam at the Berlin WallWe also saw heaps of the Berlin wall, and were shown round a number of sights. However, given the ridiculous hour we had woken up, our tour guides lulling voice soon had me nodding off :o)
Feeling extremely tired (and hungry) we checked into our hotel room, and made plans with our kiwi friends (we had met them on our Paris trip and organised to come on this trip with them). We decided that all we could handle was finding the beer garden - given the gorgeous heat and weather. So we traded our London woollies - ie jeans and sweatshirts for shorts and t shirts and ventured into town. We started with a kebab nearby our hotel - and did you know that the Doner kebab was created by Germans?? There are heaps of turkish food shops in Germany, and we were mighty pleased to discover that food is really reasonably priced in Berlin - made a nice change from Londons atrociously overpriced slops.
It was so nice to relax in the sun at the beer garden, and after a beer and some nice cake (strawberries set in red jelly on top of a shortcake base) we had replenished our energy levels.
The beer garden is situated in 300 acres of park (half my parents farm!) and it was so nice walking through all the established trees - until we happened upon a naked guy showering -(think outdoor shower like at the beach - except no togs) haha yep, one side of the park is dedicated to nudey sun bathing - heterosexual, and the other side is nudey sunbathing homosexual - further up is family bbq section - not to be mixed up!
Any, once our eyes had recovered we carried on to see a few famous Berlin sites, including "Chick on a stick" - or Golden Angel (pictured below),
the Brandeburg gate(pictured below),
a Soviet Memorial (made by the Soviets before the Allies arrived in Berlin at the end of WWII, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (pictured below).
We then decided after all that walking it was time to have some dinner, and a good opportunity to try the German sausage - or worst (pictured below left - Bev ordered a supposed meat loaf - which just turned out to be a ham steak!).
SATURDAY
The next morning after sleeping like babies, we went on a Bunker tour, which was located at the underground station closest to our hotel - very handy. It was really interesting to learn the history (as both Bev and I are very unhistoried), and I think the most interesting bit was that this wasn't from the Jewish perspective - the bunkers were made for nazi's to hide in from the bombings. I could talk about this for ages, but it was pretty interesting! Also learning how much the Germans measured - to work out how many people they could fit seated on stools in one room they worked out that the average length of the seated persons bum to knee length is 54cm.
After this we travelled to the Jewish museum -which I found incredibly interesting/moving. It had heaps of stories about Jewish families and random facts about them and their families trials and tribulations, and the most sobering of all - how many out of their family survived.
After this we headed into the centre for some lunch, and found a nice restaurant near to some monuments we wanted to see. From here we decided to try and find a tea house that our guide had pointed out on our bus tour, and successfully found it. This was very relaxing, it was turkish styles - so everyone sat on the floor on cushions and totally veged out for an hour or so.
The Berliner Dom (Church)
After this refreshing break we went and saw the Berliner Dom(see above) - a really cool Cathedral, then checked out the Reichstag(see below) - very cool parliament building with an awesome glass dome at the top, which you can walk up and get a nice view of the city.
The Reichstag - Parliament building with dome at the top
Overly enthusiastic Pretzel seller - Bev and I totally wet our selves laughing at this guy for ages! (still didn't buy a pretzel from him though - they taste yuck!)
At the top of the dome, you can lie down and look out the hole at the top at the sky - very relaxing especially when you have walked 10km in one day.....zzzzzzzz!
Bev and I at the top of the Reichstag dome
From here we walked back to the Beer garden 
The four of us gaining a second wind thinking about the beer garden and a yummy dinner
for a relaxing evening of more German beer, yummy as pizza's made on a kind of naan bread and half a marinated chicken mmmmm! Yum. 
Bev and Corey
The two Suzanne's (we hadn't meant to be name, hair colour and clothes colour co-ordinating!)
An attempt at capturing the awesome atmosphere in the beer garden!
On our way back to the hotel from here were saw a movie set that had been set up around the Chick on a stick - they had film crew and big commercial lights all set up - our tour guide said that a lot of movies get filmed in Berlin, because it can look like London, and more modern cities all in the one location. (see picture below)
SUNDAY
On Sunday, our feet were nearly ready to drop off, so it was a perfect time to go on a bike tire of Berlin. This is probably the second most highlight of the Berlin trip (after the beer garden), as again the weather was great, it was so relaxing riding around a flat city - and you can get everywhere so much faster on a bike than you can walking! We worked out that we had walked at least 10km the previous day - so no wonder our legs weren't working anymore!
We had this really cool tour guide on our bike ride - he was a german guy that had spent a few years in America, so he had the whole Californian beach bum thing going on, but was extremely good at relaxing and entertaining. Our favourite bit was his descriptions of what the Soviets decided to do with East Germany. He always gave two options for us to choose from. Option number 1 (this would always be something sensible) and Option number 2 - blow it up and concrete it over.....which one do you think the Soviets chose....Option number 2!
After this we had to quickly make our way back to our hotel to meet our tour group to go to the airport and fly back to London.
So overall what did we think of Berlin?
Berlin was really cool - it is the first city (that I Jam) actually thought - "I could live here" - after talking to my dad about this he wonders that is because my paternal great grandparents were from Germany/Poland and perhaps it is one of those random sensing where your roots are from moments - so am not sure??
We really like the size of Berlin - 3 million people, meant that there weren't the huge London crowds etc. Lots of old monuments mixed with new buildings, and cheap food. Not to mention the weather and the beer garden!!
What random things can we mention about it?
They have these really cool little men as symbols for the pedestrian crossing lights in Berlin
We found the Germans extremely friendly, we were asked if we needed help no less than three times when Germans saw us stumped looking at the map - pretty impressive considering this hasn't happened in any of the other countries we have been to - Egypt, Netherlands and Paris.
We found that the Germans weren't very eager to speak English to us - perhaps even more reluctant than the French, however we also found that a lot of them couldn't speak very much English anyway - a stark contrast to the Dutch who happily flicked between the two languages for us, and the French who are happy to if you try some French first - perhaps the Germans would have like us to try speaking in German first??
The only downside of Berlin is that it is a swamp - it therefore has bad swampy smells that you get a hint of every now and then - but at least it has a natural excuse for bad smells - London just smells!
To keep Berlin free of swamp water, it has heaps of unsightly above ground water pipes - really strange.
The Germans love David Hasslehoff - he is more famous in Germany for his singing than his role in Baywatch haha!
Berlin is basically bankrupt (hence the reasonable price of food) - it is still recovering from the wars, and the inequality that was created between East and West Berlin. And because of the East-West split that Berlin had, there is no real centre to the city as there is two of everything ie two town halls etc.
Anyway thats about all there is to say about that! Now we just have to catch you up on our 2nd Paris trip - watch this space!
Lots of Love
Jam and Bev
