Berlin, Germany, New Years Day and after...

Naturally we didn't surface on new years day until the afternoon. We went back into the town center so I could see Brandenburg Tor in daylight. It was still surrounded in tents and stages so hard to get a good view of it but it was cool to try and match it with what it would have looked like with the wall.

Also in the square where the Tor is is Hotel Adlon. It's a pretty famous Hotel with scores of celebrities staying there and it survived the bombings of world war II. Most recently it's famous for where Michael Jackson hung his baby out of a window.

We walked over to the Reichstag, a very famous building where an arson fire here led to Hitlers fight against communists and a lot of important events occurred here. You can go up into the dome but the queue was insane so we didn't attempt it.

We explored the area a bit more then walked the Unter den linden, one of the two major streets in Berlin (the other was Freidrichstrasse which we also walked). We found a 'car forum' which had all these cars including a Bugatti Beyron (the fastest street car apparently according to Nick - he was quite excited) and a couple of restored 60s VW beetle vans which I really liked. I could definitely see myself in one of those. So styly.

We also found a bit of the real Berlin Wall (see pic) with the original graffiti from when it was pulled down.

There were a lot of beautiful buildings in Berlin, I don't know what they all are but the city is a great one to just wondering around in looking at all the architecture. It had snowed a lot too so it was fun to play in the snow :)

We came across the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (or the Holocaust Memorial) which is a series of over 2000 uneven granite blocks. Apparently there has been a lot of controversy around it but I thought it was a stunningly beautiful tribute. It was a very calming experience walking through the monument covered in snow. I personally found it one of the most beautiful spots in Berlin.

We had to move accommodation on the 2nd because I'd booked new years a bit late so everything was a bit disjointed. We stayed in a hostel in a suburb called Freidrichstein on the eastern side of the river. It was a really cool area full of bars and restaurants and chilled out people. A really neat area of Berlin to stay in.

On the 2nd we headed into Alexanderplatz to see the TV tower. We had been waiting for 3 days for the sky to clear so we could go up but with no luck. The constant grey mist never budged. So we gave the tower a miss and walked across the park and over to Museum Island.

The buildings were beautiful, the best being the Dom (church). All the museums cost and their themes were a bit boring for us so we just admired the architecture. We found a little market with lots of artwork which I had real trouble not buying and we tried the Reichstag again but this time it was shut due to the weather so we missed out on that again.

We found a really nice restaurant back in Freidrichstain for dinner, it was an arabian place. The food was awesome, mixed meat grill, chicken charwarma, hummus, eggplant, tzatki. yum yum yum!