Prague wasn't in our Lonely Planet so we bought an electronic copy, this proved to be not as good as the paper version, wasn't as accessible. We spent a day exploring the city although very beautiful, it felt like the beauty was only skin deep, that is to say if you went inside some of those buildings they wouldn't look so good from the inside.
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| Astronomical clock |
The Czech food we had on offer would not definitely not get the heart tick, it seemed as though they were trying to achieve the opposite in fact. A baked potato for instance seemed to be kind of a flat deep fried cake made of shredded potato. Craig resisted the urge to have the lard dumplings and cabbage for dinner on the last night. On the topic of food beer seemed to be fairly cheap here about 31-40 Czech Crowns, 1 Euro is 25ish Crowns, we'll let you do the math on this one.
From Prague we headed for Berlin, Craig was pleasantly surprised by Berlin and Leena had been looking forward to going there since the start of the trip. Berlin is an interesting place, with funky red and green pedestrian crossing men (Ampelmann), art installations scattered around the city, battle scarred monuments, cobble stones indicating where the wall once stood and other monuments that seem to warn Germans against attempting world domination or a planned economy again.
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| Ampelmann |
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| Russian WW2 war memorial |
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| Brandenburg Gate |
Berlin is really a mash up of Imperialist, Nazi, Socialist and capitalist, this shows in the buildings streets, memorials and statues that are scattered around the city. There is a kitch feel to the entire city. The city seems to embrace its interesting past. An example of this is the DDR museum. This is a small museum that details life in East Germany, we spent about 4 hours just looking at all the different things, from the food they ate to the cars they drove to examples of the working conditions.
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| Trabant engine disected |
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| World Clock |
The highlight of our trip to Berlin would have had to be the Trabant ride, with this company http://cms.trabi-safari.de/opencms/opencms/trabi-safari/en/_main/home/index.html, you can read more about the Trabant here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant. We got driven around by a friendly guide who was more than happy to answer any questions, it felt like we were being driven around by a friendly local rather than a guide. For instance he told us the the first gay film was shown in the DDR on the night the wall came down. When the people went into the cinema the wall was up, by they time they came out (no pun intended) they wall was down.
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| East Side Gallery |
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| The Trabant we had our tour in |
This was Leena's third visit to Berlin, her first was when it was split in two (June 1989), her second was just after reunification (July 1992). Last time she was there the sky in Potsdamer Platz was full of cranes. This time she found lots of new buildings. Leena remembered how Western citizens driving from West Germany had to wait in line for hours to get through the customs and border control. The forest outside Berlin ie. in DDR was dead due to acid rainfall. Looking the forest from the train window after 22 years the forest seemed to have healed itself as trees are now green and the forest floor full of flora.
Standing at Check Point Charlie was an interesting experience for Craig. This was a place for him that appeared on the news as a child, but now it looks very different, with new buildings and walls full of information about what happened there. This made Craig wonder what was going through the leaders of the DDR heads when the built the wall to keep its citizens in.
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| Checkpoint Charlie |
Not far from Check Point Charlie is the former head quarters of the Gestapo and the SS at different stages. This is vacant lot with just the foundations remaining, with walls of information of what when on there. Craig found this a very uncomfortable place to be, the same way he felt in Port Arthur in Tasmania, the place wrecks of bad vibes from all the misery that emanated from there, it felt fitting that the place was left as a vacant lot.
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| Remains of Berlin wall |
Craig and Leena had planned to hire bikes and explore the city with them, but as with any time one of them so much as muttered the 'b' word on this trip the heavens opened and it started to rain. So far we have carried the helmets around for only one ride in Salzburg and that was in the rain.
Berlin was the first place that we wanted to buy souvenirs from. The kitch feel to the city came through loud and strong in the souvenirs, which made them of interest to us, not the same crank the handle and spit out "I Love <Insert City Here>" T-Shirts, mugs and other crap that we've come across in our travels. Somehow a model Trabant is more attractive than a pressed tin Eiffel Tower or blown glass from Venice.
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