Day 20 - How Much Can We Fit Into 1 Day in Berlin

Today was our only day for sightseeing in Berlin’s so we had to try fit as much as possible into one day!

However, after yesterday we were tired and didn’t feel like getting up very early. We had a tour through the Reichstag building booked at 9.00am but because we are staying quite far from the city it would mean getting up early. We decided not to go (it was a free tour) and just to leave for sightseeing whenever we were ready.

At about 10.00am we left for Brandenburg. We wanted to see the Brandenburg Gate. This was right near the train station so it didn’t take long!

We noticed a lot of police around, and security. Also the flag of Iran was flying so after asking someone, we found out they had some big Iran protest.

From here we could see the Reichstag, which is their Parliament building, so we walked there just to have a look. Outside, there was a small protest going on with cameras. The guy was telling everyone how bad black people are - I guess some things in Germany don’t change! It became particularly awkward when he interviewed a black person, but we weren’t close enough to hear properly what was going on.

We passed a little stall selling German pretzels so of course we had to try one. It was actually pretty bland, just some hot bread with a little cheese on it. We also bought a bratwurst which was nice!

As we kept walking, we noticed that there were hundreds of people wearing Metallica t-shirts everywhere. Apparently they had a concert in Berlin on that night.

After this we walked to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews which is a huge number of concrete blocks at different heights. This is so much bigger than you would expect! Ali has always wanted to go through a maze, and now she feels like she has been through one. You could actually get lost in here - in fact, the girls did get lost because they went running off and it took us about five minutes to find them amongst all the concrete blocks which the girls thought was hilarious.

All around Berlin there are signs like this one. Some of them just say careful for pickpockets, and others are fully detailed signs with bullet points of all the potential scams and what to do.

From here we walked to the Fuhrerbunker. This is where the bunker was that Hitler commit suicide in. They didn’t want neo-Nazis to come here and celebrate, so they made it into the most boring thing they could think of - a carpark. The only thing that marks it is one sign. One thing we found interesting and neither of us knew, was that after Hitler commit suicide, they publicly burnt his body in this exact location.

We walked again for a few minutes and arrived at The Topography of Terror. This was originally on our plan for yesterday but we ran out of time. The whole reason Ali wanted to go to Berlin was for the war history, but Auke isn’t interested in it at all (as you could also tell from the Sachsenhausen Concentration camp), so he sat down and Ali had a quick look around. She could have spent hours here but because we had kids with us, she had to settle for just looking at a few pictures. Half of the pictures were outside running along the Berlin Wall, and the other half were inside.

The Topography of Terror is situated where the old SS Headquarters used to be. It also runs along the Berlin Wall so we could see part of it here. From here, they have a timeline of how/why the war started and accompanying photos. It was very interesting to see.

One thing we learnt that we didn’t know was that not just Jews, gypsies, etc were killed, but also they targeted anyone that was considered ‘anti-social’ or ‘work-shy’. Auke would have been targeted for sure!

It’s hard to imagine that Germany was so willing to go along with the racism. They even had signs up saying to boycott Jewish lawyers and doctors. Many local shopkeepers and house owners wrote all over their windows anti-Jew slogans.

They had maps which were marked with which areas were cleared of Jews.

They also had the ruins from the piers of the original driveway to the headquarters.

At that stage, the kids needed the toilet so Ali couldn’t see any more photos. After that we thought we should hurry so Ali skipped the rest of the outside photos and quickly went inside the building. Within two minutes we left as the kids were sick of it.

For the next part of our sightseeing, we had to catch the underground and then a bus to get to Staatsoper. Here we saw the oldest university in a Berlin where Albert Einstein used to teach. Nearby were other old buildings.

We then walked to Gendarmenmarkt. Here we saw the French cathedral. A lot of the road near hear was blocked off as they had an Open Air Orchestra setting up.

We carried on walking to Museum Island, but we weren’t able to see too much as a lot of this was also closed for renovations. We took a few pictures outside a church.

We carried on walking until we got to the Berliner Dom, a Protestant church. We weren’t originally planning on going inside but the girls really wanted to so we bought tickets to have a look inside.

In a lot of ways this church looked similar to others we had seen, except there were elaborate coffins in the church from kings and queens and other important people.

We decided to climb to the top of the church which was 400 steps. Our legs still hurt from Eisriesenwelt but it was worth it when we got to the top! The views of Berlin were great!

Once back down the stairs, we went to the bottom story of the church which was the crypt. This room was full of more coffins - sadly there were quite a few baby coffins! Once again they seemed to mostly be kings and queens.

We left the chapel and crossed the road to have a quick look at Lustgarten, and took a photo of the beautiful Altes Museum building.

We then walked to catch a bus to Alexanderplatz. Once there we walked to the Fernsehturm Berlin (also known as the Berlin TV tower).

This is the tallest building in Germany at 368 metres tall. We went inside and bought tickets. There was approximately an hour and a half wait until our ticket time, so we crossed the road to find somewhere for dinner. We didn’t want to go too far away so we could keep an eye on when it was our turn. Thankfully nearby there was a nice Asian place. We ate here while we waited.

We noticed there was police everywhere, so we were wondering what was going on. As we started to walk back to Fernsehturm, police started leaving their vehicles and walking to right outside. Turns out there was another protest scheduled. This time it was against violence to children in Turkey.

We went inside the tower and shortly it was our turn. The reason we had to wait is because only 400 people can be at the top at a time. For this reason they count everyone going up and down. After going through security, we piled into the elevator. This elevator goes up 6 metres per second, and it has a window in the top so you can see, except it was so crowded we couldn’t really see! We went up 203 metres to the observation deck in just 40 seconds.

It was amazing seeing so much of Berlin - we could even see the Brandenburg Gate!

Eventually we headed back down again, and caught the train and the bus home.