pour améliorer: Bus-ing Berlin

We began our first full day in Berlin fairly early, and immediately made for the train station (our hotel was a couple of stops out from the central areas).

We didn't make it very far before Tom insisted on stopping to take a photo of the large cobblestone pavers. He's obsessed, I tell you.

Parts of Berlin are known for their cute little pedestrian traffic lights. Their men are short, squat, and wear hats.

We made our way into the city, and tried to find a place where we could buy (and board) hop-on-hop-off bus tickets.

We found the bus, posed in front of it, and hopped on!

Berlin is a very very very large city. We're very glad we chose to buy the hop-on-hop-off bus ticket to take us around to the major sights.

We were kind of a little taken aback by the contrast between our last city, Prague, and Berlin. Prague's old town was full of grand old buildings, whereas because Berlin was about 70% flattened in World War II, it feels almost completely brand new as you move around it. It made it hard for us to decide whether we actually liked it or not. It felt less like a tourist destination, and more like a functional workplace.

We encountered a grand piano on the back of a truck outside the Kulturforum...

Tom thought he might be able to absorb some culture by standing next to the sign.

This was a street where an assassination attempt on Hitler was made.

We went for a brief stroll in Berlin's enormous central park, called the Tiergarten.

And then we attempted walking the block, back to the pick-up point for the bus. It took us about 20 minutes to simply walk down one street. Berlin blocks are absolutely huge!

We decided to go the quickest way back to the bus pick-up point, and hopped back on again. We went past one of only two of the remaining original pieces of the Berlin wall...

And we decided to get off and go through the Jewish museum. As with many Berlin buildings, it's very modern, and was specifically designed for this purpose with no 90 degree corners.

This was the most confronting architectural element, in my opinion. A room full of steel plates with open mouths, noses and eyes meant to represent all of the jews, that you could walk over.

This staircase deliberately comes to a dead end, because it's supposed to represent the holocaust, and the sudden end to so many lives.

There was a fairly impressive holographic video showing how early Jewish villages were arranged.

And some very cute little Jewish caps (Yarmulke) for bar mitsvahs.

This exhibit showed where jews migrated to from Germany.

The museum tried extremely hard to be interactive and interesting. It was very very large though, and we began to get a little overtired after a while.

These were the stars that Jews were made to wear by the Nazi regime.

Here is Tom reading the account of a few surviving Jews.

After the heavy emotional effect of visiting the Jewish museum we were in desperate need of food. So Italian food it was!

Next stop was Checkpoint Charlie

Isn't that a juxtaposition? McDonalds and Checkpoint Charlie?

All of the cafes along the road that Checkpoint Charlie is on have segments of the original Berlin wall outside their entrances. Apparently.

We hopped on the bus again.

Our bus only narrowly missed the overhead traffic lights. We had fun judging whether or not it was going to make it underneath it.

This was the second, much longer and more decorated section of the Berline Wall that exists still. A whole bunch of artists came and painted it when most of the wall was brought down.

We decided to get off the bus near the television tower that was built by the Russian control of the German Democratic Public in the period after World War II.

We enjoyed some buskers...

I succumbed to the desire to do just a little bit of essential shopping...

We checked out the timezone back at home in Australia... 1:30 am.

We particularly enjoyed a leggo exhibition by a local department store...

Tom thought he was really clever making a Louis reference...

We finally found a hat that suited Tom...

And a building that promised the largest possible size - ever.

And then we went in search of slightly more serious monuments...

Tom danced around a pole...

That columned building contains a very moving statue of a mother holding her wounded son. A monument to the tragedy of war.

We moved on to the nearby university. Underneath that very imposing statue of a man is...

Two cherubs fighting with a telescope-looking bat. Love it.

We moved on from old, grand buildings, to fancy cars. Tom's dream.

And then it was finally, FINALLY time for dinner! Which we forgot to take photos of. We did remember to take a photo of dessert though - called Spaghetti Carbonara, but made of ice-cream and various sweet ingredients. Very interesting.

Strange or not, we cleaned up the plate.

On the way back towards our hotel we stopped outside a few windows. I thought this ceramic rhinocerous was pretty amazing. I know Sherry from Young House Love would probably love it.