Berlin, for me a city i had never been to. Lots of times i wanted to visit it but being Dutch and kinda living close to it, its one of the places that i always seemed to forget. Being that i took way too few 'vacation days' of work last year (you have to take them before a certain time in Dutch law, else they will get paid with a hefty tax). And that fact that we allready have a three week trip to Bali planned coming September, we thought it was a good idea to do a short little trip to something closer.
Berlin is HUGE. It’s something like 5x the physical size of Paris but it has 25% of the population (disclaimer: numbers not accurate). And because the city was divided for so long, it never developed a true “center” like you find in most cities. There are basically mini-centers scattered throughout the city, and it can take 30-45 minutes via the subway to travel from place to place.
We took an really early morning flight, arriving so early that we wondered if there were actually any people living in Berlin, haha.
Not knowing what i've just mentioned above, we decided to walk around untill we found the Siegessäule (Berlin Victory Column, 1864)
This column was made after the Prussian victory over Denmark. It survived WW2, but the bullet holes are still in there:
Checkpoint Charlie (part of the wall):
Hard to think that people were staring at each other, with tanks on this point.
Fernsehturm tower, 368.03 m (1,207.45 ft). You can see this tower from pretty much anywhere. We needed to go up ofcourse!
Time for some cocktails in the Monkey bar, when its quiet you can hear the animals in the zoo nearby. That being said, as cool and hip this place looks. The cocktails weren't that good, shame!
Stay tuned for day two where we go to Potsdam, former residence of Prussian kings and alike.