Berlin; Thursday, 02 August, 2012

From the central station I caught the S-Bahn round one stop with the intention of picking up the U-Bahn down one stop to the hotel. My plans were thwarted by the German Mole of Doom.

The mole character is used whenever there are engineering or building works taking place to indicate disruption to the service, and in this case the disruption was caused by the construction of a new bit of U-Bahn line, the same bit of U-Bahn line, it has to be said, that they have been building ever since I first visited Berlin over 8 years ago, which meant that the line between where I was, and where I wanted to be was closed and replaced by a walk. In the end, it wasn’t too bad a walk to the hotel so I wandered down to it and checked in.

For the first time since the Windhook Country Club in Namibia over 9 years earlier I had my bags transported to my room for me by a porter (given I don’t normally stay in this kind of hotel I have not concept of how much you tip porters. I gave €5, but that could have been incredibly cheap, though the guy, as you would expect from a professional, didn’t say anything!)

Having explored the acreage of my room, I headed out for an afternoons wandering, and started the sightseeing directly opposite the hotel in the Fransösicher Dom, including taking in the views from the base of its dome.

Next stop was the Bärenzwinger (bear pit), quite literally a pit (albeit delightfully landscaped with a range of environments for them to enjoy) for the city’s bears. The emblem of Berlin is a bear, so the city keeps some bears! From there I wandered over towards the TV tower to look at the options for a bike tour of the city, and then headed over to the Berliner Dom to have a look around that, and take in the views from its dome.

I started to wander over to the Reichstag, but on my way stopped at the Neue Wache, the memorial to all victims of war and tyranny to have a look. It’s an amazingly moving space, exceptionally simple but it works perfectly to create a respectful space.

I continued wandering over towards the Reichstag with a view to taking in the sights from its dome, but since my last visit in 2009 they had changed the access rules, and you now have to book on-line in advance, so I postponed that for a while.

Instead I wandered back to the hotel to freshen up and then headed back out for dinner, though having to pause for a couple of minutes, thankfully in the hotel reception as I’d only got that far, whilst the most spectacular downpour, accompanied by enormous hail stones, went past.

After dinner I had a long wander around the city centre taking ending up at the Alexanderplatz watching something (I have no idea what it was) that involved a lot of music, and a lot of fire.

I then walked back to the hotel stopping to take some final shots of the Fransösicher Dom before having a late beer in the bar, and then heading for bed.