We spent the last week in Germany with some friends visiting first Berlin and then Munich. I'd never been to either city before although I have visited Germany many times on business (mainly Frankfurt) We were excited for the trip and were looking forward to visiting some of the famous cold-war sites in Berlin and finishing the trip off with a day at the world renowned Oktoberfest in Munich, which the boys of the group were particularly looking forward to (the girls not so much..)
Upon arriving in Berlin we took a taxi to our hotel which was right next to the landmark TV tower in the picture above, this proved to be quite useful as the tower gave us a landmark visible from pretty much everywhere in the city, making deciding the right direction to our hotel straightforward even at night. The tower itself was built in the late 60's by the DDR (East Germany) as a symbol of Communist power and at 368 meters was the fourth tallest structure in the world at the time. You can go up to the revolving restaurant at the top but we decided it looked a bit like a tourist trap ($$) and anyway, our hotel had a pretty good rooftop bar which was quite high enough for a decent view of the city (and free!)
Of course no visit to Berlin would be complete without a trip to see one of the remaining sections of the Berlin wall, the one pictured above was on the East side of the river Spree and is now a kind of outdoor art gallery. At the site there were many pictures of what this spot looked like prior to the wall coming down in 1989, it looked like a pretty grim place and one of the footnotes of the posters there reminded visitors that 11 people died at or near this very location trying to escape to the West.
Of course not every Berlin experience is somber and thought provoking, it's a fun city too as we were to find out in part 2 of our adventure..
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