Berlin (Part 1)

So I just got back from my 10 day adventure in Germany, and lets just say, I loved it. Germany is such a beautiful and amazing country. So much history, and yet so much rebuilding as well.

I flew from Glasgow to Frankfurt Hahn (which is about an hour and a half by bus outside of Frankfurt) and since my flight didn't get in till about midnight, I spent the night in the airport. Not a terrible experience and I would probably do it again if I had to but definitely not the nicest airport I've ever seen. There were a ton of people who were thinking along the same lines as I was, except they were much better prepared than I was since they had almost their own campsite set up on the floor, complete with sleepingbags, therma-rests, and pillows. I just found a little piece of disgusting floor and curled up with my bag, using my jacket as a blanket. Oh well. At least it was free.

I caught the first bus into Frankfurt in order to try and catch the 9:00 train to Berlin. Needless to say, my first impression of Frankfurt was not a pleasant one. Since the city was almost entirely destroyed during WWII, it's a completely rebuilt city but still looks disgusting with no atmosphere or pretty skyline or anything. I decided that I wasn't going to spend my last 2 days here and started thinking about somewhere else in Germany to go.

My trip to Berlin (and in fact all my travels) was uneventful. My German reading course proved helpful as I had very little trouble reading the signs and figuring out where to go, however, actually communicating with people was a little more difficult. I arrived in Berlin and had no problem finding my cute little hostel right in the heart of Berlin. It was within 10 minutes walking of pretty much everything that I wanted to see. Excellent. Plus, as soon as I showed up, another girl staying at the hostel also showed up. We chatted for a bit, she's from Australia and travelling for a year, and found out that all we both really wanted to do was spend our time in museums. Great! We spent most of the first day just wandering around, headed down to the Bombed out Church by Zoo Station and endulged in some "Street Meat" aka Bratwurst. Since I had not had a great sleep the night before, I ended up heading back to the hostel fairly early and went to bed.

A free walking tour of Berlin leaves from the hostel every day and so, I decided that this would be a great way to see the city, get my bearings, and then decide what I wanted to see more of. The tour guide was excellent, a PhD student in modern history, with some great stories. Unfortunately, the weather was absolutely miserable, freezing cold and raining, so that made the tour a little less enjoyable but all in all, it was great. I learned a lot, since I don't really know any modern history, and enjoyed getting a better feel of the city.

One of the reasons I wanted to go to Berlin was to see the Pergamon Museum. When I went to Turkey, I saw a lot of empty spaces where triumphal arches, temples, altars, etc. should have been. The Germans who had excavated the area had taken a huge number of these large artifacts back to Germany with them. (Some with the Brits and the Britist Museum) So, off I went after my walking tour to see the "rest of Turkey" as I've taken to calling it. What an amazing museum. The main feature is the Great Altar to Zeus at Pergamon (below) which is absolutely incredible. I had no idea how big it was even though I've seen a ton of pictures of it. It's the first thing you seen when you walk in and the expression on people's faces when they first walk in is priceless. As much as I hate having people in my pictures, I'm kind of glad that there are some, just to give people a sense of the scale of this altar.


The rest of the museum is just as impressive and I spent a good chunk of my afternoon there. I then headed off to the Altes Museum, which is quite small but has a really neat room copied from the Pantheon in Rome. It has a great bronze head of Julius Caesar (with the eyes still in so it looks quite creepy) and some beautiful, and pretty famous mosaics.

My Aussie friend and I met up for Cocktails in the evening and then just got some doners and some chocolate and headed back to the hostel to regroup. It was an incredibly full day of seeing things, but amazing and made me realize that there are so many things going on in Berlin that there is no way you could see them all in one trip. Just means I'll have to head back there some day...

(I haven't put up alot of pictures here but of course all my Germany pictures are on my photo website under Germany, so feel free to check them out: http://picasaweb.google.com/medea.colchis/GermanyTrip)