To take full advantage of our train passes, Mark and I decide to stop and make a day trip to Dresden on our way to Prague. Dresden is nicknamed the Florence of the Elbe. It is lively with art and there seems to be museums everywhere. We didn’t really know much about Dresden so we just got one of the tourist maps and walked around the area to all the sights.

We arrived in Dresden in the morning and had all day to wander around. After locking up our main packs we started heading towards the town center. There seems to be a lot of construction going on in this city and much of it is on our way to the center. There are many towering structures and and most have scaffoldings surrounding them. As we enter the center we see the Elbe and around which there are a lot of churches and museums.

We ended up catching a 2:30pm train instead of the 5:00pm because we got bored of the city. There is much to see, but since we were sick of going to museums we just walked around outside.

I was really impressed with this zoo. There were a lot of viewing areas where you could get pretty close to the animals. There is a moat around the area and animals come pretty close to the viewers. The orangutans were out and one of them even posed for me.

The polar bear was out swimming along the edge of his enclosure. He would submerge and then jump out of the water towards the viewers.

The panda bear was sleeping the first time we walked by, then the second time he was eating a carrot. It was kind of strange to see a panda bear eating a carrot.

The aquarium section was really interesting to me. I used to have a planted freshwater setup back in school and I also had some dendrobates (dart frogs). Both of which were exhibited in the aquarium section. They had both salt and freshwater tanks but I was more impressed with the fresh as the salt was much better in Monaco.

This is an Arowana. It gets really big so I haven’t had a chance to keep one yet.

Dendrobates Azureus

After we left the Zoo we got a currywurst for 2€ and headed back to the hostel.

After taking a walking tour previously I decided to do some exploring of my own. Nang tagged along and we took a S-Bahn to Berlin Hauptbahnhof along with Harsha. After seeing Harsha off at the train station, we walked south from the station hoping to see some of the creations at the world sand castle building competition. Instead we ran into a volleyball match on the fake imported beach.

I asked one of the security persons at the gate and he told me that the match was actually free. So Nang and I squeezed up the crowded seats. The match was between US and Brazil. It was a close match but Brazil ended up winning. There were nestea girls performing at halftime.

Immediately after the game the clouds opened and it began to shower. We took a brisk walk across the street and south towards the Reichstag. The Reichstag is a parliament building. The middle is a dome made of glass and is transparent. Mirrors form an expanding cylinder as it moves up towards the top of the dome. This structure is open to the public and the mirrors are suppose to remind the government officials who is in charge as it reflects the people of Berlin.

The rain ended as we finished exploring the upper areas of the dome. We headed towards what remains of the Berlin wall. Today there is a photography exhibit there. It showcases the photographs of the war and was an insightful read.

We started out walking by most of the monuments in the area. We walked through the holocaust memorial. It is really quiet and gives you a lonely feeling walking through it. People enter and disappear from sight in the distance. The columns all differ in height and it reminds me of Giant’s Causeway.

Everywhere you look there is construction going on. It seems that Germany is still rebuilding and fixing much of their architecture. There are still bullet holes and weapons damage on a lot of the buildings that we walk pass. One of the most interesting walls was tagged with lots of graffiti and near the bottom there was writing that said “David Hasselhoff Saved The World From Communism”. The last three words has since been disappeared but the first message still remains.

There are still pieces of the Berlin wall that is still in tact. There are two sets of walls. The middle area was known as the dead zone where anyone seen in that area would be shot on site. Today there wall serves as a reminder. Today there was a picture memorial along this area where photography from the war is being displayed. Parts of the wall have been made into art as well.

Book burning was prevalent during the Nazi regime. Bebelplatz Square is where most of these book burning occurred. There is a memorial on the bottom of the square to serve as a reminder as well as a quote from Heinrich Heine, one of the authors whose book was censored. The quote reads “Those that burn books will burn people”. Furthermore the university across the street has a book sale on sunny days of the books that were once censored and burned in that very square.

Checkpoint Charlie is a popular tourist attraction now. None of what you see there is original. The reason this point is famous is because there was a standoff of tanks between the east and west forces. There is a picture of an American guard facing one direction and another picture of a soviet guard facing the other. The soldier’s name is not Charlie, Charlie is the military designation for that particular checkpoint.

Mark’s friend Harsha was able to meet us up in Berlin. The first thing he said when he arrived at our hostel was “Can I have an extra pillow. With a new friend in town, it was time to celebrate. We went on several pub crawls in Berlin and we were able to get a pretty good feel for the nightlife of Berlin. We went with some people from our hostel, Alyson and Katherine. We arrived late at the all you can drink power hour. At the first pub crawl we randomly ran into Jimmy, an Aussie that we met back in Amsterdam. What a small world. We met him on the Red Light District walking tour and we hung out afterwards for a few drinks. He will be going to Prague as well so who knows maybe we’ll run into him again.

One of the nights we walked through Berlin’s red light district and two of the prostitutes started hitting on these two Swedish girls in our group. It was pretty funny to hear German hookers speaking broken English to the two Swedish girls replying in their second language.

Another interesting thing about Germany is that you can drink in the streets. So most of the time when you haven’t finished your drink and its time to go you don’t have to chug you beer. Instead every pub will provide a plastic cup for you to take your beer to go. The interesting thing is that you always see huge groups of people walking down the street doing pub crawls.

Zoo Station is a big metro station near our hostel and I decided to start there. From there I walked towards a towering statue which turns out to the the victory angel. Near the station I found myself wading through a sea of photographers. It turns out that there is a car show that day. I finally walk through Tiergarten which is a huge park in the middle of Berlin. There is wide open spaces, trails and trees everywhere. On that day there were a ton of people biking around.

The weather quickly changes just as I walk past the tower statue. Luckily I had bought an umbrella that morning so some scattered showers did not bother me. I continued east and found myself in tourist central. A ton of sights and memorials. Berlin seems to have some kind of memorial on every corner of the street. This is the Holocaust Memorial and one of the coolest one’s I’ve seen. It is much better than some statue.

I didn’t spend that much time around the touristy area as today I just wanted to get a feel of the area and find my way around the city. I knew I would be taking a walking tour after Harsha gets in the next day. So I breezed through that section and by then it was dinner time. I took the nearest S-Bahn back to the hostel.

Mark and I took a train from Amsterdam to Berlin in the morning. We arrived at our hostel called Jetpak City Hostel. It was by far one of the nicest places I’ve stayed. Everything was extremely and clean. The common areas were all very nice. We found out that night was free admission to all museums so we quickly dropped off our bags and headed to Museum Island where there are three museums.

With only two hours of left free admission we breezed through most of the exhibitions. I think I am getting overloaded by museum. They are no longer interesting to me. I don’t think I have the background to appreciate 90% of what I see. None the less here are some shots from that night.

Berlin’s public transit system is a series of S-Bahns and U-Bahns. The S is on the surface and is faster than the U which is underground. The Bahns use the same honor system for tickets. You have to buy a ticket and get it validated before you get on the train. However there is no gate system where you have to have a ticket. We bought tickets most of the time when it was convenient and never saw anyone get checked.