Holy crap! Today was one of the longest days of my life! We overslept our alarms because Maddie and I each thought the other was setting one, so neither of us set one! Chris, who didn't bring a single electronic device with him (not even a watch,) was not of much help either haha. We woke up at 9:45 and rushed to get ready. Our plan for the day was to go tithe free New Europe tour from 11 to 2:30 and then to explore from there.
A tour company called Sandeman's has begun to offer these free New Europe tours in almost every city. The way their business model works is that they have these free tours, where the guides are only compensated by tips from us. The company then offers other tours that cost €10-12 each that are more specialized than the free basic city tour, such as a Berlin in World War 2 tour, an Alternative Berlin tour, and even a pub crawl! Because they offer them Niall of the cities we are visiting, we are planning on doing each of the free tours because they help you hit lots of the major sites and help you get your bearings in the city quickly. Our guide, Sophie, did a great job for the free 3.5 hour tour. Because she is only paid on tips, she is encouraged to do a better job.
She took us around to see:
- the Pariseplattz: the plaza behind the Gate where th US embassy is
- the Brandenberg Gate: the last remaining gate of 14 from the time when Berlin was a walled city. It is an ico for the city. It is topped by a statue of a four horse chariot called the quadraga(spelling?) that is so famous that even Napoleon stole it
- the Reichstag: the house of the German Parliament. Has a huge gold dome in the roof that you can take a free tour of
- the Holocaust Memorial: a memorial that looks like a maze of cement rectangular prisms of varying heights
- the Luftwaffte headquarters: one of the few remaining Nazi buildings, the former air force hq has been turned into the German tax department
- the site of Hitlers bunker: though filled in, we stood above the infamous bunker where he shot himself
- a section of the Berlin wall
- Checkpoint Charlie: the American-run checkpoint between East and West Germany
- a big Christmas market
- Humboldt University: where Einstein and Lenin (not John Lennon like Maddie thought) studied
- a Nazi Book Burning Memorial
- the Memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny: a cool memorial with an oculus so the elements can cast different effects on the statue it houses
- Museum Island: home to the Royal Armory/National History Museum, the Pergamon museum, the High Arts Museum, the Berliner Dom (a cathedral, "dom" is not a typo), and more
It was well worth it. Along the way two big things happened. Firstly, Chris and I tried currywurst. This delicious concoction costs less than €3. It is a sausage, cut into chunks, smothered with ketchup, and dusted with curry powder. It is usually accompanied by a small warm roll. The currywurst was so good I had to get two! Once we saw this first stand though, we began to see them all over. The second funny thing to happens as that Maddie left us to go get a crepe while we nommed on our curry wurst. She didn't meet up at the rendezvous point until 10 minutes after we had agreed upon. Less than 24 hours in and we thought we had already lost her! She blamed it on the slow people making the creeps but I believe that she had really been secretly scarfing down currywurst from a different vendor!
This is just the first half of our day (up to 3 pm). The rest will come in the next post.
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