Berlin

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Hey everyone.

We had made it to Berlin by train from Prague and were shocked at the massiveness and complexity of Berlins main international train station (Hauptbahnhof). It's like a big neat maze with lots of Germans in it. Not fun when you've just had a 5 hour train ride, 25 kilo bags to lug around and you hardly speak any German!! It took us a good hour to get outta there!! To get to our accomodation we had to catch 2 trains from Hauptbahnhof and this was a big problem for us with our heavy luggage and the many flights of stairs we had to go up and down and lack of escalators or lifts! We learned our lesson then and decided early to catch a taxi back when we left Berlin.

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After coming from Prague, Berlin was quite a different experience. Much more modern and cosmopolitan but still rich with a somewhat intense history (as you all know!). We took part in a free guided walking tour of the city and we weren't dissapointed! We highly recommend it to anyone going to Berlin. It leaves from the Starbucks near the Brandenburg Gate, and caters for English,German or Spanish speakers!

Our guide was a nice British girl named Emma, who had a vast knowledge of the city and helped us to appreciate and understand much that took place in Berlin and Germany itself. We saw the Brandenburg Gate and Pariserplatz, Reichstag, Hitlers Bunker (or where it is underground), Memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin Wall...whats left of it anyway, Checkpoint Charlie, Babelplatz (sight of the famous Nazi book burnings) and Museum Island. We also checked out the Jewish mueseum...quite full on and a lot to take in but worth seeing for yourself.

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We weren't very lucky with the weather and got alot of rain and thunderstorms, but it didn't dampen our experience of Berlin. The history of the city and people is so interesting that almost everywhere you go you see an important piece of history. The people there are very nice too, and tolerated our lack of Deutche sprechining! But to be fair we have quite a vocabulary now...essen mine shisse!

This is the last stop of the first leg of our trip, and are moving on to the Netherlands for a couple of weeks and hanging out with our old roomates (and Dutch natives) Emilie and Robin. We are also going to make a trip to Belgium too. And of course check out the North Sea Jazz festival in Rotterdam...very excited!!

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Lots of love,

Anna and Michael