By the third day in Berlin we realized we needed a game plan. Berlin was a humoungous city and there was way too much stuff we wanted/needed to see. So arming ourselves with the map of the city, we marked our way.
We were off of the hotel earlier than the days before and we were in Alexanderplatz in 10 minutes, where we ate the delicious breakfast bagels that Dunkin’Donuts has to offer. And we were on our way to Potsdamer platz. The buildings there are… amazing.
Potsdamer platz was once laid to waste during World War II and left desolate during the Cold War – the square was bisected by the Berlin wall. In 1991 the Senate organized a design competition for the redevelopment of Potsdamer Platz and its surrounding area. It was then divided in 4 parts where there new buildings would emerge.
And of course the result is impressive (I could say that for the rest of Berlin, but yeah…). The architecture, the design, the variety is absolutely stunning. I swear I had neck pain just from staring all the time to the top of the buildings… The Sony Center’s Bahn Tower is incredible and the entrance halls of the subway and the embassy of Canada are such beautiful pieces of art.
It was in Potsdamer Platz that we first saw pieces of the Wall. All of them were decorated with nice graffiti and were standing in the same place the wall used to be. It was overwhelming to actually see that an entire city was divided by such thing…
We walked from there to the Bauhaus Archive. Bauhaus Archive. Bauhaus. Brilliant. Need I say more?
We drowned ourselves quite a bit in the Bauhaus and we were then off to the Berlin Zoo. We decided to first buy tickets and then take a look at KaDeWe and have something to eat there, but it was Sunday and every shop is closed on a Sunday, so we had Currywurst for lunch and off we went again to the Zoo.
Opened in 1844 it comprises and area of 35 hectares and is located in the Tiergarten. It confines 1500 different species and is considered one of the most popular zoos worldwide.
The minute I entered I melted. A PANDA. A freakin PANDA! And the cutest panda I ever saw in my life. Aaaan it was called Bao Bao. It was just soooooooooooooooooooo cute that I phoned my mum and asked if I could bring home a panda. She didn’t reply. ah…
The rest of the day we just fell in love with every animal in the zoo, that was huge. We decided that we wouldn’t visit the aquarium, mostly because it would most probably ran out of time to see everything… and I wish I did have time to see it all… oh well, a next time.
Nevertheless we saw the most amazing creatures! The night time creatures collection was so awesome! I also wanted to take home a fox…
By the time we finished adoring the foxes it was time to go because the zoo would be closing its doors, so we were on our way to the Bretscheidplatz, to take a look at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church… this church was heavily damaged during the World War II and one just can’t avoid staring in awe and disbelief… The new church is superp. The glass work gives it a beautiful effect when inside and I was speechless when I saw that… amazing.
The cherry on top of the cake on our carefully thought out itinerary was the Holocaust Memorial – the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It consists of an enormous area covered with 2711 concrete slabs, one for each page of the Talmud, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field… and our mouth fell open when we saw it. We actually sat, eating a delicious Häagen-Dazs, just taking in all that the memorial represented… and after that we got lost from one another. Which was actually funny!
Some slabs are tiny and go bellow our waist, but some are huge and of course we started to wander and lost sight of each other…
After finding each other we walked to Unter den Liden and tried to decide what to have for dinner, while wandering around in the streets… After cutting through Bebelplatz we started to spot new sightings. We were wondering what that was, because we thought we had already seen every monument/building…but we didn’t. That’s the marvelous thing about Berlin. With each turn there’s something new, something amazing, something worth staring at for at least an hour… or a life time.
So we discovered the Gendarmenmarkt square, where one can see the Konzerthaud, the Deutsche Dom and the Französische Dom (German and French cathedrals).
There was this man playing the violin, right in front of the Konzerthaus and he was so fabulous that a huge crowd was astonished with the music he was playing so we just stayed for quite a while listening to him.
It was already getting dark and I was so entangled with the lights and the streets and its beauty that I knew I didn’t want to leave…
We decided to have dinner in the same place we had our first german beer so off we went to Dom Aquaree. We had quite a feast by the the candle light, everything was delicious.
After that we strolled around a bit and went to the hotel.
I’ve got a sh*t load of videos to edit and upload… but has to wait for a bit. ^_^;
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