If you ever go to Berlin ...

I've just spent the best part of a week in Berlin. What a fantastic city !

The only problem was that I drank way too much and I didn't get enough sleep !

Here's a brief summary of some of the places I went to while I was there.

The Berlin Wall (or at least some of the bits that the wall peckers haven't been able to get at!)
The Brandenberg gate
The Reichstag
The Story of Berlin
The new Holocaust Memorial
Check point Charlie
The Hackershre Markt
Karl-Wilheim Church
The Egyptain Museum


Of all these places, I would recommend the Reichstag, Brandenberger Tor and the Holocaust memorial. Hackershre Markt was pretty cool too. Check point Charlie was a disappointment.

One of the things that I did do while in Berlin was take a free walking tour. This was lots of fun and gave me a pretty good idea of what I wanted to see in the old East Berlin (and also some ideas on what I didn't want to see). It also was a pre-requisite for the Pub Crawl. If you have the time and a morning to recoved, then the pubcrawl is definitely a lot of fun ! (I gave up my "Berlin Salsa experience" for the Pub Crawl, and I don't regret it one bit - I even managed to liberate two lovely JD glasses !).

I think Berlin is such an exciting city with a lot to offer the casual traveller. It is interesting because of its dark history in the last 100years but I think it's more interesting as Berlin has changed so much in the last 17years (since the wall came down), and is continung to change at a very rapid rate. It is interesting to talk to some of the people that lived in was used to be East Berlin and to get their impressions of what Berlin used to be like before 1989.

If you ever have the opportunity, I would definitely recommend Berlin. I'm sure I'll go there again very soon. If you decide to go, please let me know 'cos I'll probably come along too !