The tour was interesting, as walking tours typically are. It started at 2:30 and was supposed to last 4 hours, but we had to move to another location to rendezvous with another group at 3pm (wasting €2,10 in the process for those without daycards), seeing nothing along the way. At the other location we spent some time buying tickets (only ISIC was accepted as proof of being a student so I wasted €1 - damn). Then there was a 1/2 hr rest stop which wasn't mentioned in the leaflet. Gah.
Mobile Bratwurst man we saw while waiting for the tour to start
There is a Mercedes building which was built with a rotating Mercedes sign on its roof to taunt East Berliners about their having a choice of only one car, the Trabant. This is what the TV tower was a response to.
When Berlin was divided, the East had all the culture and the West had all the zoos. So the East built a zoo and the West opera and concert halls. Gah.
To commemmorate the (presumably erroneous) passing of the millennium they had cranes in Berlin moving in unison to the national anthem. Uhh.
The guide described the museum island as housing what the Brits didn't steal from the ancient world. Heh.
Berliner Dom (Cathedral) - proof that Protestants can be as opulent as Catholics
Collonade on Museum Island, where there was a shootout during WWII. Apparently bullet holes can still be seen.
Dom
Oddly enough it was the Nazi State Church and Goering got married there.
Egyptian Museum
The building was originally for something else, and the bowl was left outside because they realised it was too big to roll by the pillars. It used to be the old National museum of Berlin. We were misinformed that the sarcophagus of Nefertiti was inside.
Egyptian Museum
East German TV tower. They built it to show off to the West Berliners but didn't have enough skill to complete it, so they got in the Swedes. The Swedes engineered it such that when the sun's rays strike the tower at a certain angle, a cross would be projected across the sky.
Taking the fountain in front of the Egyptian Museum as a reference point, the Egyptian Museum is behind it, the Dom to its left, to its right there was a military training ground and in front a palace that used to be twice the size of Versailles (until the damn Communists tore it down, except for one part with some socialist significance from 1919). They represented respectively Culture, Religion, Military and Monarchy.
Bridge with 8 statues depicting the life of a Roman Soldier
When Berlin was a Prussian military camp, they had a wall built around it - to keep the soldiers in. Hurr hurr.
Peace memorial. Under the Nazis it was in memory of those who died fighting for the Fatherland. Under the Communists it was in memory of those who died fighting against the Nazis. Now it's in memory of everyone.
German State Opera
People sleeping in Babelplatz. This is also where the memorial to Nazi book burning is. It looked like a piece of opaque, clouded plastic in the ground and I couldn't see anything. It was very crowded and I was running slow, so I only took a picture of the memorial on Day 3.
Frederick the Great once escaped to Paris with his gay lover. When he was captured back, his father made him view his lover's execution, after communing his death sentence, and to cure him of his homosexuality he was sent to Dresden where his uncle had a brothel with 500 women. Unfortunately he caught syphilis and became impotent.
St Hedwig's Cathedral
Cathedral in Gendarmenmarkt, 1701
If the name sounds French, it's because it is. The Hugenots sought refuge in Berlin after the Edict of Nantes was revoked.
Cathedral in Gendarmenmarkt, 1706
Unfortunately the 2 Cathedrals look so similar because the East Germans rebuilt them in 1985 - to boast of their surfeit of culture/history viz the West
Old Theatre House, 50% original
Houses the main Philharmonic Orchestra of Berlin. The statue is of Schiller.
There was a chocolate shop with the Titanic, Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate and more in chocolate. Wah.
Schlotzsky's Deli (rest stop), with schizophrenic opening times
Line marking the former location of the Berlin Wall
CIA building at Checkpoint Charlie. For 30 years they stared out the windows at the KGB building opposite the road (now demolished).
The guide told us his favourite Checkpoint Charlie escape story, which I didn't see in the museum. This Eastern guy said he had to visit his sick grandmother on the Western side, so he went up to the guard and pleaded and cried for 5 minutes, despite his lack of papers. Midway he changed tack and said he had to visit his sick grandmother on the Eastern side. The guard got confused and told him to go back to the Western side, and he did.
Remaining section of the wall. One of 2 layers of the original wall-complex.
This part dates from 1975, a 4th generation wall - the very last layer people faced before freedom.
We were told this huge edifice was the Luftwaffe (?) HQ - the most targetted building for bombings after Hitler's HQ. Yet it still stood - a monument to fascist architecture. Later it was the Communist HQ since it was one of the few buildings still standing (1/7 Berlin buildings were left standing after the War). Now it houses the Ministry of Finance. I have a feeling it wasn't the Luftwaffe HQ though. The fascist architecture is supposed to make you feel small though.
On the wall there's a mural showing how happy the East German workers were and how hand-in-glove they worked with their leaders. A photograph of the 17 June uprising is used as the base for a pond in front of this though.
Under this site Hitler's bunker lies, filled with rubble. They don't want to even mark the spot since it might become a Neo-Nazi rallying point (the same has happened to the Eagle's Nest, whose guestbook has been signed by many prominent Neo-Nazis). Also, the Jewish memorial is nearby. The USSR tried to blow it up with dynamite but failed.
Under the Communists these nice apartments in the background were built (where the Reich Chancellery once was) to show the Westerners how nice life was there.
Hitler's signatures are very interesting to read. You can see how in the last year of his life it became small and illegible. Apparently he was dosed with Ecstasy and other drugs every day in his last month, making him the first consumer of the former. This coupled with not seeing daylight for a month drove him over the edge (so much for the training he received as a British Agent!)
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Holocaust Memorial)
Controversial because it remembers only Jews, and because they later discovered that the company making the anti-graffiti coating of the stones also supplied Zyklon B for Nazi death camps. The symbolic atonement is nice though.
There are 2711 stones and only 2711 stones (ie No text, statues or the like - if you didn't know you would think it a giant piece of installation art). Coincidentally the same as the number of pages in the Babylonian Talmud, though the number has no significance and was chosen as a paring down from the original due to lack of space or something. The memorial is supposed to be symbolic - you make your own meaning (down with modern art!)
The slanted road and varying heights of pillars is supposed to disconcert you and give you nausea, akin to what Jews in Death Camps would have felt.
It's the perfect venue to play Laserquest or Hide and Seek in. Or you can screw with people's minds by building an exterior wall, placing them inside and having people in white flowing robes flit from pillar to pillar laughing. What it reminds me of the most, though, is that game where you go through a maze composed of pillars arranged in a regular pattern, enemies come at you and you have to shoot them. The maze is like in Bomberman but the blocks are not destroyable and they’re placed in a fixed position. It sounds like I'm describing Pacman, and the game is almost like that, except that you get to shoot your enemies and they you, and there are no dots to eat up.
Brandenburg Gate
There was a stupid fenced enclosure with a giant blowup football behind me, so I couldn't get a good shot.
At the gate the guide perpetuated the Jelly Donut urban legend. I corrected him, saying I'd also listened to the original speech, but he claimed in Berlin what he said really meant what he was claimed to have said and that there was tittering during the speech. At the end he admitted that I was right and he was just trying to get laughs. Tsk. Which makes me wonder if some of the other stories (eg the sick grandmother escape story) were false as well!
Reichstag - seat of the German parliament
There was some Turkish party and concert going on near the Brandenburg Gate, and people were waving Turkish flags. Apparently 20% of Berlin is Turkish, and there're more Turks in Berlin than everywhere in the world except 2 cities in Turkey. I should've organised a Kurdish concert opposite advocating Kurdish independence, protesting Turkish oppression, showing pictures of tortured Kurds and had people waving the Kurdish flag, but that'd have caused a riot, so.
Unfortunately the tour ended too late, so I missed a free performance of Cantata 136 by the Bach Choir at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnis-Kirche at 6pm. When I reached the place it was 7:06pm or so. Gah!