My 2nd favorite city

My heart will always be with San Francisco. However, Berlin is my favorite city in Europe that I've been to. I spent the weekend there in March 2004. I woke up at 4:30 am in order to get to the train station for the first ICE train to Berlin. I couldn't sleep. First I was nervous traveling over the weekend by myself. I'd made reservations at a hostel, but I was a little wary about sleeping in an unknown place with 6 other strangers in a room. I also wasn't sure if I could see everything all in one weekend. But I somehow managed sleeping a little in the hostel and didn't fear getting pickpocketed or mugged or whatever during my stay in Berlin.

The Reichstag is the most awesome thing. It is where the German parliament sits. People stand in a long line just to go to the top where there is an awesome dome. It's supposed to be a very energy efficient design, and the dome is part of that efficiency. I heard that in the summer you would have to wait several hours in the heat, but since it was March and not quite high tourist season, I waited for about 30 minutes in line while chatting with some other tourists.


The inside of the dome looks over the main Parliament assembly room. The whole thing is just awesome.

There is a little of everything in Berlin. It's like it took little highlights from every city in the world and crammed it into Berlin. There are very old buildings with scars from the war standing next to state of the art brand new buildings. Apparently, ever since the fall of the wall, this city has been changing rapidly. Potsdamplatz used to be ghetto, then popular, then ghetto, and now it's finally popular again. There aren't many signs that the wall even existed here. The checkpoint charlie museum is there to document the wall and those who managed to bypass it. However I tried looked for parts of the wall, and I couldn't. Maybe I wasn't looking at the right areas, but I couldn't find the wall.
Checkpoint Chairlie Museum next to Checkpoint Charlie. Checkpoint Charlie is now just a touristy thing. There are guards there, but I think they are just there to take pictures with tourists

There was some difference between the former west and east sides. I could tell that the east side buildings were a little more concrete and boring looking. The west side of town had residential areas with victorian style houses. And the streets were all tree lined on the west side, while the east side had hardly any folage. But there are definitely areas of the east side that are looking more modern. It would be interesting to go back in a couple of years to see how things have changed.

I ate at a bar called "Kaiser Soze", which was near the "Mudd Club". I wasn't sure what kind of club it was, but Kaiser Soze was a bar/cafe. I just thought it was awesome to be able to eat at a place called kaiser soze.

I knew I had seen most of the touristy stuff when I went to a place selling postcards and looked at a "hi from Berlin" postcard with all the major sites printed on it. I had gone to all of them. By then, I was tired, but very satisfied that I was able to get around to seeing everything that I needed to see.

The world clock that tells the time for anywhere in the world
Green means go! I love this little man. There aren't many Berlin street crossings with this little guy left. I think it was an East German thing, and I love it! The "stop man" is pictured below

The old church in Europaplatz. It is surrounded by nice modern buildings and it's near the western main train station.
I believe that's the goddess of victory, Nike on this tower in the middle of town. I climbed up to the top, and the view of the town was amazing!