My first lone day in Berlin was a very quiet one. I like to think of it as ‘mental recovery’ – a day or two when I didn’t have to do anything, be anywhere, talk to anyone if I didn’t feel like it, and I could eat what I liked for dinner. Ahhh, the freedom! I celebrated by doing bugger all except a wee spot of shopping, made friends with a girl in my dorm, and ate one of the best Greek salads ever for dinner.
After two days of Rosie Time I decided to achieve something, so I wandered along to the German History Museum. It is located on Museum Island, near the Berliner Dom and Alexanderplatz, and is a beautiful building:
After Sachsenhausen I had a lot of questions about Germany, the world wars and why at age 13 I chose to study German not French “because the French are nicer”. (To be honest I still prefer the language, but I definitely think Germans are a more friendly bunch.) There is a myriad of museums across Berlin, but this one seemed more my thing, and so I walked in and spent the next four hours listening to my audio-guide and learning about the Barvaria and Bohemia and the National Socialist Party. I thoroughly recommend the museum if you are a bit devoid on history lessons but curious about what the hell happened.
Next stop was the Berliner Dom, the largest (and protestant) cathedral in the city, and also one of the more stunning ones I have seen on this trip. It is also one of the only cathedrals that demanded money from me to get inside, but I wanted to go up the dome so I paid up.
Getting to the top was somewhat of a climbing mission, but there were some great views of Berlin once you got there:
They keep bees on the roof, something to do with environmental friendliness (some would say environmental terrorism because, as we all know, bees chase people out of spite).
PRETZELS
There isn’t really a pretzel section of this post, but I would like to give my support for German pretzel bakers to be welcomed as immigrants with special talents into any country that I visit. I love them.
PUNKS
Similarly as with the pretzels I don’t have a proper punk section but there were tons of them in Berlin – I even saw a ginger punk with a Mohawk – and here is a photo of my favourite bunch.
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