Berlin - 1.5 Litre beer glasses, Oh boy!

Berlin, population 3.5 million, is the capital of Germany, population 82 million. Post WW2, it was divided into East Berlin, governed by the Russians, and West Berlin, governed by the Americans, British and French. When many East Berliners decided they liked the West better a 155 kilometre, 3 metre high wall was erected, overnight, to stop the mass exodus. The wall came down in 1990.

Although not a beautiful city, Berlin has some world class architecture, albeit pock marked by the weapons of a world war. Berlin has as an extraordinary collection of museums which rank among the very richest on the planet that take days to get through, and an amazing outdoor eating lifestyle centred around the canals and many plaza's. Berlin is pushbike crazy, everyone pedals around and most of the taxi's are pushbike based for inner city travel. One bike has six seats in a circular design and everyone pedals to make it move forward, you have to see it to believe it.

During a single meal, in the Jewish Quarter, no less than six wandering street theatre acts presented in front of us, ranging from acrobatics to quartets to opera singers, all touting for the odd dollar. Berlin has a plethora of parks, forests, canals and lakes and is not a place that is appreciated easily or quickly and not without a broad range of emotion. 

 One of the first things we did, after tasting the local brew, was to take a three hour tour of the canals in a river barge. Yes, Berlin, like Paris and Venice, has water as the vital lifeblood of the city. A series of canals, connected by locks to control the water height, provide much of the public transport, movement of goods and social nightlife for Berliners. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways weaving between east and west.

The Radisson Blu Hotel has, as it's architectural centrepiece, a 1 million litre, 30 metre high fish tank with over 5000 fish, cleaned daily by scuba divers. All the rooms face the fish tank. You could watch this for hours. To get a sense of the scale of this tank, look at the coffee tables and chairs and the glass lifts at the right side of the pic.

There are many museums in Berlin, the most interesting to me being the four floor Altes Museum that contains more Egyptian antiquities than the two floor Cairo Museum. The collection of artefacts is grander, better presented and in far better condition than the Cairo exhibits. I asked a Guide where it had all come from and got the answer that much had been donated over time and received in good faith. The Guide added that a lot of the provenance on items was shady. Possession being nine tenths of the law seems to hold where Egyptian antiquities and heritage are involved, worldwide

I visited the iconic Brandenburg gate, through the maze of pillars at the holocaust memorial, had my passport stamped with an East German stamp at Check Point Charlie and ambled through the gardens of Potsdam Castle.


Everywhere we went, the Berliners were friendly and accommodating with conversation and guidance. Our Australian accent attracted many people wanting to practice their english and talk about Sydney. We refused so many free beers for conversation mainly due to the size of the glasses and lack of time to drink them all :)))

I regularly bumped into remnants of the Berlin Wall seemingly forgotten and ignored by modern culture. I won't speak to the atrocity that preceded its construction or the oppression that it visited on the people and community of post war Berlin.  Everywhere you look there are bullet holes and blast marks, in a city founded in the 12 century AD, that tell a story beyond any words.