Our trip to Berlin...

We went to Berlin on Sunday September 18th for 5 days. But we almost didn’t make it there cause I was in so much pain on Saturday that I couldn’t move. My back was just killing me and even when I didn’t move, it was painful. I thought I accidentally injured it when I was doing this yoga move, but its not like I haven’t done it before. I actually called the Alberta Health Link for advice, and they advised me to go and see the doctor. It was a Saturday so I couldn’t find a clinic that was open. Besides, I had a hard time walking anywhere so I didn’t physically go out and see if they were open. Luckily I live 5 minutes from the James Hospital (one of the largest in Ireland) We found the non emergency doctors to take a look at me (they made an exception to see me cause I didn’t have a GP and one was required) It was nothing serious, just a kidney infection. I guess that was why my back hurt on one side only. My muscles were only inflamed on the left side by my kidney. I also live 1 minute away from the chemist (aka pharmacy) so that was handy. Took my pills and 2 hrs later, it was like nothing happened.

Everyday, there’s only one flight going out to Berlin and it was at 7am in the morning! The flight was only 2 hrs so we arrived into Berlin at around noon (1 hr time zone change) Bo’s cousin (Jie) and her boyfriend (cute German guy) picked us up from the airport. We didn’t know what she looked like but we she saw our pictures online so she found us. Bo has met her once but he was only hand held size so he didn’t remember much of it.

We will be staying at Jie's place. She lives in East Berlin, and very close to city centre. We went there to drop off our stuff, before going to Sunday brunch at a café by her area. The food was excellent, and it cost about half as much as Dublin. But I got attacked by a bee. It kept flying around our food and around my face. I tried to run away from it but it just kept on following me. Arg. We walked a lot today. I was quite tired afterwards. We went around East and West Berlin on foot. I saw graffiti everywhere. (No walls were spared!)

On Monday, we were on our own since Jie was heading off to work in Brussels and will not come back to Berlin till Friday. She works in Brussels but travels back to her home in Berlin every weekend. So we got her place all to ourselves. We each bought a welcome card, which allows us to use the public transportation for 72 hours, so we’re all set. It also comes with a voucher booklet for attractions in Berlin. But we didn’t make much use of it.

When we were in Paris, we took a bike tour with the Fat Tires Bike Tours. They also operate in Berlin so we took another tour from them. I really enjoyed the tour and we covered a lot of ground. We went to the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, Potsdamer Platz, Victory Column, Hitler’s Bunker (they didn’t excavate it and there’s apartment buildings around it), Reichstag (German Parliament), Museum Island, Soviet War Memorial, Bebelplatz (site of Nazi book burning) and the list goes on. (We didn’t go into any of them) It was a long tour; we took a lunch break at a beer garden. The food was excellent! But I got attacked by another bee! (I think it was a bee, I can’t tell bees or wasps apart) Arg. Overall, the bike tour was great. It was around 5 hours in total but we probably rode for about 4 hours so it wasn’t hard work. We stopped quite frequently to look at the site and talk about the history of what we’re looking at.

In the evening, we went to see the Blue Man Group in a theatre around Potsdamer Platz. We arrived 5 minutes before the show started and score excellent seats! They were premium seats, in the middle, on the ground floor. We had no idea what the show was about, so we had no expectations. I saw the glossy brochure for it in the tourist info centre (it’s the nicest brochure there) and it reminded us of the IBM commercial (the one with the 3 guys all painted and dressed in blue) It turned out to be an awesome show. The visual effects were great and included audience participation. Only 5% of the show required the knowledge of German. (narration and on large place cards), so without knowing German, I thought the show was about visualization, animation, music and their evolution. I googled it and found the description for the same show in Las Vegas: A "Blue Man" (called such because of their entirely blue heads and hands) is "the curious being from inner space who wants to 'blesh' with the audience through sound and color."

On Tuesday we had breakfast at a café close to our crib. They didn’t have an English menu so we randomly picked things off the breakfast menu. When the food came out, it was the most nutritious breakfast that I’ve ever had. My plate had about 5 different types of cheese, 4 different pieces of fruit, 2 different types of sliced meat, 3 types of bread and a hard boiled egg, with grapefruit juice. Bo’s was similar, but in additional, he had smoked salmon, yogurt and olives. After our grand breakfast, we went up to the East Berlin’s TV Tower on Alexanderplatz. It’s 1198 feet high with some great view of Berlin. Then we went to a shopping mall and Bo bought a huge Lego set (Technic 8421) that just came out this month. This thing is bigger than my backpack. So we went home early. After a tiring day yesterday, I accepted the chance to relax and watch 2 movies. Bo starting building it right away and he kept building even after I went to bed.

On Wednesday, we visited the Sea Life Centre and the AquaDom. The Sea Life Centre housed many interesting sea creatures, but it was more for kids. The AquaDom is where there’s tons of different sea creature in the outer tube of the elevator. Picture a hollow see through cylinder that an elevator can go through, with a giant tank surrounding it. It’s interesting but it seems to be a short ride to the top. It would be better if they stopped the elevator longer in the middle of the tube. Again the narration was in German only. Then again, when you’re in the elevator, it’s like looking at a giant fish tank that has you surrounded.

Later on that day, we went up on the Berlin High-Flyer, one of the worlds largest helium balloons. It rises up to 150 meters high. I always wanted to go up on a hot air balloon, but this will do for now. The balloon uses helium to rise up and there’s a cable attached to it so that it doesn’t float away. But they said that even if the cable breaks, we would still be safe. However, they didn’t explain how we would be able to get down without the cable. We had a birds eye view of another Jewish Memorial (this one was huge; there was many blocks of different height that represented the different characteristics of the fallen Jewish people. We spotted the Canadian Embassy, which wasn’t too far from where we were. (We checked it out afterwards, it’s very nice in there.) After the balloon ride, we went to another large shopping mall and I was able to find a post office where I can send out postcards. That night, I did something that I’ve not done in months… I finally took a bath! We started to pack tonight cause we had a morning flight to Dublin. This was the only departure time.

On Thursday, September 22 2005, we arrived at the airport at 10am for our flight to Dublin at 11am. We were cutting it pretty close, luckily, we made it through security with some time to spare. This was the first time that I saw security use a hand held metal detector and padded everyone down. Maybe the big ring metal detector was broken? I didn’t take any motion sickness pills this time cause I miss placed them in Dublin. The flight was fine for me until the last 30 mins. I had to get up and go to the toilet. A few minutes after returning to my seat, I felt extremely sick on the plane. I think I broke into a cold sweat in minutes and I felt my hands shaking… I almost puked! (Which I really really really hate doing) Luckily, I was able to hold it in… otherwise, ewwwwww.

Interesting notes on Berlin
- Not much difference between West and East Berlin
- Graffiti is almost everywhere, lots of them look pretty good
- West Berlin has normal looking pedestrian lights while East Berlin has a short, fat chubby guy with a hat on. (but some of the East Berlin lights did get replaced by the West side lights, until the East Berliners protested)
- East Berlin is the only place in the world where the pedestrian guy has a hat (According to our guide)
- Lots of Germans can speak English, and they are nice.
- Germany has the third largest Turkish population other than Turkey
- Lots of Donor shops (most likely because of the large Turkish population)
- Many memorial sites to Jewish victims during the Nazi regime
- Lots of construction
- East Berlin is slightly cheaper to buy things than West Berlin
- Very multicultural