berlin

wow! what a lovely, green, civilise city this is. Quite unexpected. Flying in you can see lots of forests and lakes and rivers, and then flying over the city there are trees everwhere. Our hotel is very close to the Tiergarten, (think Central Park) and the Zoo, as well as being in the upmarket, extremely expensive shopping part of the city (Ponsonby combined with Remuera!). On the first afternoon I went for a walk and discovered all these designer shops called Prada, G&C, etc with shoes of Jimmy Chu and Miumiu, all on halfprice special for Euro 700 plus. Definitely window shopping only, but amazing! the area had lots of cafes and bars with seats outside, like Divas. On the first full day in Berlin we went for a walking tour which took 4half hours. Luckily for me, that included a train ride. Had a great guide who was a Brit, and so funny! he gave a great commentary, and you got a first hand look at many of the old buildings. App. a lot were destroyed in the bombing of Berlin esp. by the Russians who were the ones that over ran it eventually. there was a massive restoration project in the 1960's onwards esp. in West Berlin, so the outsider wouldnt know these werent the orgional buildings. the guide said he came here in 1999 and all he could see was cranes everywhere! Also I commented on how green with trees it was, and he said after the war there were no trees anywhere in Berlin. the bombings took care of a lot, and then in the winters after the war the Berliners were starving and cold, and cut down the rest for wood. that included the Tiergarden (big park). so even in the big airlift during the 60's trees were continually being brought in and planted.Amazing! the first part of the tour was concentrated on older buildings aka before the war.

then we moved onto Checkpoint Charlie, which was where there was a East German, american confrontation during the cold war. Lots of people there, you cant see the wall there, but cobblestones mark out where it was. there is a museum there in the closest house on the west Berlin side (it was used as a spying house onto east Belin!) and in the museum there were some graphic depictions of people trying to get across the wall though ingenious ways! (some successful some not.) I liked the hot air balloon (home made) the cars with compartments in the motors to hide people, even two hollow surfboards with room for a person inbetween! considering the wall was up for 30 years it was hard to understand what life was like for the east berliners esp.

we then moved on to parts of the wall that were still standing. one part had to be protected by a fence to keep people out! (bit of irony there!) another longer part (1km) was given over to famous artists to depict their ideas after the wall came down.