Bits of Berlin
One of the advantages of having a German-speaking friend in Germany – she takes care of the headache that is figuring out which is the most suitable train tickets for our itineraries. (In any case she chose the unlimited day pass which was about €6, I guess we could have done that ourselves…)
NXX’s hood, smothered in a thick layer of snow. We had fun ungraciously hurling clumps of snow at her.
1. A sign at an S-Bahn station
2. A sign at a U-Bahn station
3. A picture of us on the train. I believe this was taken when we got lost immediately after NXX left us to fend for ourselves on the first afternoon.
Cutest mitten (singular because NXX lost the other side) ever
Once again I must emphasise how cold and snowy Berlin was…
Random people shots and the train back to the airport :(
Land of the Currywurst
One of the national dishes of Germany, the Currywurst is made up of a mix of ketchup (usually blended with curry and other spices) poured over sliced pork sausages and topped with a generous shake of curry powder. According to NXX, Curry 36 serves the best Currywurst in Berlin, so we trooped down to Mehringdamm for a taste of this curious post-war creation.
(We took the U-Bahn to Mehringdamm and the stall is just down the street from the station exit – just so you know if you ever pop by Berlin!)
My kind of heaven
The Ritter Sport Colorful ChocoWorld (I kid you not, that is its name) in Berlin incorporates a shop, a cafe, a museum and a little factory of sorts where you can customise your very own Ritter Sport chocolate square for €3.50. NXX, Z and I created a couple of squares for our friends, bought more for our other friends, traipsed through the museum and let ourselves loose in the cafe. What is there not to love about an entire building dedicated to chocolate?
One of the mental images of my happy place involves taking the window seat in a beautiful cafe with massive glass windows, watching the snow drift past with a mug of hot chocolate in hand. Substitute the hot chocolate with dense iced chocolatey goodness, add a few slices of chocolate mousse cakes and poffertjes, and the company of two of my favourite people in the world – I’ve found myself a new happy place. :)
Berlin: Christmas Market
We made a trip down to the Christmas Market at Alexanderplatz in spite of the heavy snow for some mulled wine (Glühwein) funtimes. Pictures from my compact camera, which lens I didn’t bother to clean…
Walking around Berlin
NXX couldn’t spend the first afternoon with us because of school, so she sent us on a free walking tour of Berlin. Our guide was really interesting, full of amusing stories and anecdotes, but unfortunately our energy wasn’t focused as much on him as trying to not drop dead in the cold. It was -6ºC for those who’re interested – very harsh conditions for the average Singaporean born and bred.
The cold also explains the shoddy quality of the following photos – more often than not we just snapped and hurried along; towards the end our tour (note i used our and not the, you’ll find out why later) we just shut down and stopped taking pictures completely. Obviously we’ve got our priorities right, we value our life more than pretty photos. We are sensible people. Woooo.
The tour started at the Parisier Platz, home to the famous Brandenburg Gate and also the French and American embassies. Apparently the head of the goddess in the restored quadriga on the Gate has been slightly tilted eastward towards the French Embassy to ‘keep an eye on the French’, Germany’s traditional adversaries. Mmm German humour.
On the other end of the square was Hotel Adlon, one of the finest hotels in Europe during the inter-war period, but more recently (by recently I mean in the last decade) in the news because Michael Jackson infamously dangled his son out of one of their windows.
We then checked out the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe (more simply known as the Holocaust Memorial). Wiki says that the memorial ‘represents a radical approach to the traditional concept of a memorial, partly because Eisenman [the memorial’s architect] did not use any symbolism’ and was ‘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’.
I’m no art analyst, but I think I could see the parallels that Eisenman was trying to draw as I trudged (ok fine, slid) through the memorial’s snowy corridors. Sadly, I think its significance is easily lost on people who don’t know better about the controversy surrounding the mindsets of the Nazi perpetrators in the Third Reich.
Part of a mural which idealises communism at the old Luftwaffe HQ. I think this genre of art is classified as socialist realism.
Tiny part of what’s left of the Berlin Wall. Heaps unimpressive, the fact that it wasn’t even in its original Cold War position didn’t help.
A replica of the Checkpoint Charlie guardhouse, blocked by a huge christmas tree.
At this juncture – 1.5 hours into the tour – Z and I were frozen to the bone and utterly miserable. So we left the pack, ducked into a mall along Friedrichstrasse and indulged in some retail therapy and pie to ward off the cold. :)
Lastly, here’s a list of the places covered by the free walking tour (which runs everyday! i highly recommend it) that we missed because of our early departure:
- The Reichstag
- The 17. June Memorial
- The Former SS Headquarters
- Gendarmenmarkt
- Bebelplatz
- The Book Burning Memorial
- The Old Royal Boulevard
- Neue Wache
- The TV Tower
- Museum Island
