I wasn't disappointed. I thought Berlin was a lovely city - it's small enough to get around easily, the people were very friendly, which I have to admit I wasn't expecting, and the food was really good! All the ingredients for a good weekend.
We left on Thursday night arriving at our hotel quite late. In the morning, we decided to do a free walking tour that I'd heard about and as we walked out onto the main street we realised that we were right around the corner from Checkpoint Charlie. It was also really close to one of the Christmas markets and some great restaurants so in terms of location, cleanliness and friendliness we'd really recommend it.
Here's Checkpoint Charlie - reconstructed for the tourists. Very cheesy...
And at night, with the 'perfect picture point' stencil ironically place behind a tree...
The tour starts off at the Starbucks near Brandenburg Gate. So many people were there we didn't think we'd get a chance to go on it but they have about 20 tour guides and you get allocated into a group of about 20 based on language.
Brandenburg Gate
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe - This was a very moving memorial which we visited as part of the walking tour but went back to the museum (located underneath) the next day. There seem to be conflicting views about what the memorial symbolises but according to Wikipedia, the architect's description of the project is "the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason" which makes sense when you see it.
1950's propaganda mural...
One of several Christmas markets. Admittedly, they don't have the same atmosphere during the day as they do in the evening...
Empty bookshelves built underground in the square to symbolise the place where the Nazi book burnings occurred...
Weiner schnitzel can obviously be found all over Berlin but we were told that Lutter & Wegner is one of the best places for it (it also had a good wine list). Again, the people were really friendly and as someone who can give or take schnitzel, it was fantastic and I loved every mouthful!
Afterward we had a cocktail at the Newton Bar across the road (it has the largest privately owned Helmut Newton photo) and outside spotted this relic from the past operating as a modern day taxi. Given the freezing winter you would hope it has a good heater!
Next day we headed over to the Eastside Gallery which is an international memorial for freedom using the remains of the Berlin wall (just over a kilometre). Over 100 artists have contributed to the memorial and it's recently been cleaned up to remove graffiti. Here are a few which caught my eye...
Reichstag building, opened in 1894 - home of the German parliament (called the Bundestag). And yes, that is a ridiculously long queue of people waiting to go inside up to the dome (designed by Norman Foster). This was the queue on Saturday so we thought we'd go back on Sunday hoping there would be less people. There were fractionally less people but we waited about an hour in the rain and cold to get in!
The dome is open to the elements so even though we'd made it inside, we weren't being rained on but it was still cold...
The Guggenheim-esque spiralling walk ways - one for going up and one for coming down. German efficiency.
