Day 0 - Arrival and Berlin at Night
Day 1 - Touring Berlin
This next one is a hotel in the Pariser Platz - a fancy one, who's claim to fame these days is that it was the hotel where Michael Jackson inexplicably dangled his baby "Blanket" out of the window and over the balcony to the horror of the crowd below. See the set of windows with the semi-balcony 3 stories up from the Hotel Adlon name, with the wide balcony rungs, and the window to the left of the central set of windows/doors? that's the place where it happened. Our tour guide pointed this out to us, and then pointed out that had Michael actually managed to drop Blanket, its possible he would have fallen onto the semi-circular red awning that covers the footpath in front of the main entrance (below the Hotel Adlon sign - you can just make out the curve of the arch where the red awning starts) and then bounce down into the arms of the crowd below, and so probably would have been alright. Yes, our guide had a sense of humour - I could already tell this tour could be quite engaging and entertaining! |
Our tour guide, having run the theme of German Unification throughout the tour subtly then finished off the tour by explaining the events which led up to Unification - and quite thoroughly and in a way that was easy to understand. I already knew the story, but I was glad to hear the guide start at the actual beginning and explain the wider forces at play - Gorbachev coming to power and reforming the Soviet Union, letting the satellite states such as East Germany a freer hand and less dependence on the Soviet Union in terms of money and protection; as a result, Hungary opened up its border with Austria and a sudden flood of East Germans used it as a means to escape to West Germany via Hungary and Austria. After all, the wall had been built to keep the East Germans from getting into West Berlin and escaping out into West Germany - even 28 years after the first wall went up, people still wanted out and here was an opportunity. Czechoslovakia did similar to Hungary, and the East German authorities lost their grip on the situation. They replaced their long time leader with a new one; he set about trying to cope with the runaway momentum and appease the situation. One of the plans was to allow East Germans to get visa's into West Germany, a freedom of movement not enjoyed since the wall went up. This information was entrusted to one of the state officials to read out at a Press Conference (he had not been at the meeting where this had been discussed and agreed to) on a written note, with no other information just before appearing at the conference - during the press conference, he mentioned the news about the Visas. When questioned by foreign journalists, he revealed that it also included West Berlin and when asked when did it take effect, lacking any other information to the contrary he famously, and fatally, uttered the words "As far as I know, effective immediately - without delay". (Our tour guide said the Visa's were supposed to take effect the following February - but they were supposed to come into effect the next day, the delay between announcement and effect to be used to inform the border guards and explain how it was supposed to work). This Press Conference had been attended by foreign press and although the East Germans weren't mentioning it, West German Radio and TV stations started broadcasting the information and particularly those installations in West Berlin could be heard and seen in East Germany. People started showing up at the Berlin Wall, demanding to be let through because they'd heard they were allowed to - the guards didn't know what to do, they had no orders that said people could go through the gates but they knew this information had been broadcast. With no one from officialdom giving them guidance on how to handle the huge masses of people starting to overwhelm the gates one way or another, and a reluctance to fire into the crowd, the head guard at Bornholmer Strasse took matters into his own hands and gave the orders to open the gates and let the masses through into West Berlin - an act which made the Berlin Wall irrelevant and basically caused the downfall of the most potent symbol of the Iron Curtain. Its quite crazy to think that things can go from being the status quo they have been for 28 years, only to change radically in the space of about 6 hours from when an official mistakenly announces the immediate opening of borders to a guard taking it upon himself to acquiesce to the will of the crowd.
From the tower we decided to head back to the main festivities by the Brandenburg Gate because why not? once there we listened to the music coming from the concert stage and partook in some of the stalls before it all wound up at 11pm again, at which point we decided to head to the accommodation and call it a night. Either before or after going up the tower, Sasha found some free Wifi and found she had an email from our accommodation that morning telling us we needed to move our belongings to another room by 1pm or the accommodation manager would do it for us. It was well after 1pm - the accommodation had Sasha's cellphone number and had made no attempt to call her on it, nor had they mentioned at any stage that the room we had been given for Friday night would be different than the one for Saturday night. Although extremely annoyed after finding this out, we decided not to hurry back straight away and continue to enjoy our evening in Berlin before dealing with that as the deed was already done. As you can imagine, when we got back to the accommodation we were not impressed but the person who was there was just someone who was carrying the can for someone else's stuff-up and didn't speak much English so there wasn't much point in complaining to them. All of our stuff was present and accounted for in the new room (which was much more like what we'd thought we'd booked) which was something, but still that wasn't good enough really. It was a bit of a bad note to finish the evening off with.
Day 2 - The Reichstag and Heading Home
Kelly was then meeting up with more friends, but we had to make tracks towards the Reichstag. The Reichstag is the German Federal Parliament building, and has been so on and off throughout German history. You can visit the roof and dome of the Reichstag, or do a proper tour through the building also - but you need to book them well in advance, something we hadn't done as we'd only really looked at what to do in Berlin after Oktoberfest was out of the way! however we did discover that it is possible to apply for tickets for that day or within the next two days if they were available, you just had to front up to a ticket office and see if there were any available. So this is what Sasha did after arriving in Berlin on the Friday, and managed to secure us tickets to the 11:45am entrance to the roof and dome (it wasn't open on the Saturday at all due to the celebrations). We got there about 11:30am, but they let us in already and we went up to the roof terrace with the new dome. The view of Berlin from the roof is quite something - but you can go up inside the modern new glass dome, which has a core of mirrors in the middle which is designed to reflect natural light down into the main Parliamentary chamber below. After doing a lap of the roof, we walked up the dome, enjoyed the view from the top then walked back down again, and then read the history of the Reichstag building from the boards surrounding the base of the mirrors. The Reichstag had originally been built with a dome in the old style of the building, but thanks to a fire possibly started by the Nazi's in their formative years it was destroyed and the building gutted. The Reichstag stayed derelict throughout the rest of the 1930's and through World War 2, and so it never was the seat of the Nazi Parliament. It was restored (without a dome) for some parliamentary functions in the 1960's and 1970's, but couldn't be the proper seat of Parliament as the UK, US and France (the powers in charge of West Berlin) forbade the seat of the West German government from being in West Berlin. Upon unification, the new German government embarked upon another restoration of the Reichstag to make it more fit for Parliamentary purposes and that's when it gained the new modern dome in the late 90's. At first it seems a bit incongruous to have such a modern feature atop a classical and elegant building, but in actual fact it kind of works and the views over Berlin from it are quite amazing. It is definitely worth a visit if you get the chance!
The flight was fairly unremarkable in itself, but poor Sasha had a cold which made her ears hurt rather nastily when descending and coming into land. We weren't landing at a familiar airport either - this flight was to London's Southend Airport, which somewhat confusingly is way out east (its based by the town of Southend, but just like Luton and Stanstead it is still a London Airport and Southend in particular has London in its name). I hadn't come across anyone I knew who had been there before, and upon landing it was kind of obvious why - unlike all the other London airports, this was quite a tiny and compact airport with very few planes. So few in fact, the only other plane I recall seeing was the last airworthy Avro Vulcan fighter jet parked up near the terminal (only weeks away from its final flight) and as we entered the rather spacious terminal hall, we were the only planeload of passengers going to the immigration desks. Which I might add, took up only a half of the room space we were in, the rest being roped off empty space. Because we were in the All Passports queue, by the time we got to the desks we were among the last passengers there - but it didn't take too long for either of us, especially for Sasha who has a rather unique passport situation which confuses the border guards sometimes and often leads to a bit of a delay getting through. While waiting for Sasha, I collected her bag from the carousel - the only carousel, in fact the whole airport kind of reminded me somewhat of somewhere like Napier or Tauranga airports, yet its an International Airport for London! Getting back to London was easy - I'd got our train tickets before I'd left London for Berlin, the train station was right across the road from the main terminal (the airport carpark is seemingly the other side of the train station) and we put our bags back to normal while we waited for the train which took us to Liverpool Street station in about 45 minutes. Before parting ways to our respective homes, we had dinner and dessert at the Wetherspoons inside Liverpool Station. Somewhat wearily we parted ways, and I think this was the tube journey where I actually kept falling asleep in between each station despite my best attempts to keep my eyes open and awake the whole time - it had been quite the exhausting, but very enjoyable weekend!
Summing Up
Berlin was quite simply stunning and I had an amazing time there. Of all of the German cities I've visited so far, this has been the most vibrant, most interesting, most exciting one - its like the city's life and soul leaped out at you, whereas with the other German cities it hasn't been like that. It has its own character and it endears itself to you straight away - much like Stockholm did to me when I went there. There is lots to see and do, lots of amazing and interesting old buildings and architecture - and curiously enough, most of the interesting stuff seems to be located in what was East Berlin. Is that a sign that the Soviets just happened to end up with the better quarter of the city when it was partitioned, or did the interesting buildings and area retain their character because the East Germans didn't do anything with them while West Germany probably modernised a lot? How did the bombing of Berlin during World War 2 affect that situation also? I don't know the answer to that, but I do feel like if Mum and Dad were to visit Berlin now, some 30+ years on from when they visited it on their Contiki tour they would find a radically different, and possibly unrecognisable place to the West Berlin they visited. For a city that was divided and had a front row seat to the machinations of the Cold War, 25 years on from re-unification it seems incredibly cohesive and has its act together. I feel like I've done or seen most of the main stuff that I'm interested in with Berlin so wouldn't be upset if I don't make it back there - well, perhaps that's not true, because if I were to choose anywhere right now in Germany that I would want to revisit, Berlin would firmly and squarely be at the top of that list. There is more to do and see - of the truckload of Museums, I'd like to visit a few of them, plus a trip out to Potsdam would be equally as nice, and then there's the culture and nightlife. So watch this space, don't be at all surprised if a return visit is made there.
On that note, I almost feel like I've seen most of Germany now - Hamburg and the upper area is about the one major area I have not been to, although I haven't visited Frankfurt or Dusseldorf either. It is safe to say I think, that from hereon in Germany is likely to feature a lot less than it has on my travel calendar simply because its been covered so. That's not at all to say I won't be going back there, but 7 times more in the next 12 months could be a bit of a stretch I think. What does that mean? visits to other places and countries, I should hope!
Southend was an interesting airport to fly into, and literally anyone I've since mentioned that's where I flew back into have asked me what it was like and "Is it even a London Airport?". It is, without question, the smallest of London's 6 airports - while it can land planes bigger than London City Airport can take, it is not anywhere as busy and while London City Airport's terminal building is cramped and confused, Southend's building is very efficiently laid out. It also means I now have been to all 6 of London's airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Stansted, Luton and Southend. I probably could put them in order of preference if I wished, but I won't - suffice to say, Gatwick still rates as the best London airport in my opinion overall. A lot of people hate Luton, but I don't mind it - when I query people on why they don't like Luton, it turns out they don't hate the airport, they hate the transport links getting there or from and have run afoul of the bus link in between the airport and the Luton Airport Parkway train station. It is a trap, I will admit - arriving at Luton, there is nowhere in the building to purchase or collect your train ticket, it can only be done at the Airport Parkway station (or at another station before you arrive at Luton). The problem is your train ticket often includes the bus fare - but you can't collect your ticket that includes the bus until you arrive at the train station, for which you need to catch the bus. When people express surprise as to why I like Gatwick over Heathrow, they often start going on about how easy Heathrow is to get to and from - which is true - but the airport itself is a pain in the butt, with long security check times, limited facilities in each of the terminals when going and more often than not, huge waits for border formalities when you come back. Its often more chaos than organised chaos in my opinion - whereas Gatwick is a breeze in virtually every respect, and its not that hard to get to either. The worst airport I've been to so far? Honestly, I'd probably lean towards either Heathrow or Stansted - probably Stansted being my pick of the two as the worst.
In all it was an excellent trip, and how lucky was it to end up there during the 25th Anniversary of Re-Unification? A huge thanks to Sasha for the opportunity and the excuse to visit Berlin, as well as being excellent company throughout! So where to next? Well, not long before Oktoberfest I'd made a decision that aside from Berlin, October was going to be a "quiet month" possibly followed by November being the same for no other reason than to try and give my bank account a chance to try and be a bit more healthy as things have got thinner on the ground than I would like. Despite this, the intention is still to keep with the "two trips a month" goal - October has already seen a weekend in Berlin, and the following weekend I had a day trip planned some months ago out of London which would easily constitute the second trip for that month. Although my goal is "two trips per month" and that's all, of late it has turned into one "domestic" trip and one "overseas" trip per month although that's not the stated intention of mine. As things stand as I write, there is a "domestic" trip planned for November already but no second trip, which may or may not be an overseas trip - we shall see. There will be something but it may not be much.
One last thing - I mentioned about the two half-Steins at the market/Oktoberfest in Alexanderplatz, but I never said what happened to them. Lets just say Mum's OE Kleptomaniac tendencies must be in my genes as they certainly came out that night!