Berlin

Friday, May 18- Wednesday, May 23

A little history refresher: During the cold war and until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the city of Berlin was divided into 4 sectors. Each one of the allies during World War II got a piece of the pie or sector to control: U.S.A, UK, France and the former Soviet Union. The soviet sector became known as East Berlin and belonged to the former German Democratic Republic-GDR-(the communists). The other 3 sectors became known as West Berlin. This part of the city belonged to the Federal Republic of Germany. Even tough the 2 cities reunified almost 17 years ago I still found a lot of differences between the East and West. This is one of the things that stroke us the most. Just by looking at the buildings, the streets, and the subway stations you can tell on which part of the city you are in: east or west. On the east side there is however a lot of new construction, remodeling and rebuilding taking place in an effort to modernize and beautify the city and make it somewhat comparable to West Berlin




So when you visit Berlin, it is like visiting 2 cities at a time. We definitely did a lot of walking here. Starting in Alexanderplatz (located in the former East Berlin) and walking along the street called “Unter den Linden” all the way to the Bradenburger Tur. In Alexanderplatz you find the TV tower to the left which can be climbed to get a view of the city. Unter den Linden is a very pretty street filled with Linden trees and lots of important Museums and landmarks on each side of the street just like the museum to the left.


TV tower in Alexanderplatz



Outside Berlin Cathedral and City view from top of the Dome

The Berliner Dome (Berlin Cathedral) is for example of one of those buildings. We climbed all the way to the top of the Dome to get a good glance of the city.

Continuing our walk down Unter den Linden we ran into one of Berlin’s opera houses: The Staatsoper. It turns out that night was the last performance of the season for the opera “Manon”. This year they decided to broadcast live the performance on big screens on the “platz” or square right outside the opera house in an event called “staatsoper für alle” or opera for everyone. So in trying to become somewhat cultured, we decided to stay throughout the whole performance and enjoy the nice evenin.
http://www.staatsoper-berlin.org/spielplan/detailansicht.php?id_event_cluster=60640&id_event_date=139517&id_language=2&show=pics&aktiv=special

Other places we visited that are a must when you go to Berlin include:

• Checkpoint Charlie and Haus am Checkpoint Charlie –. Checkpoint Charlie was the “border” or control point to cross from Berlin's U.S sector to the soviet one.
• Berlin Wall (East Side Gallery: this is about a kilometer long piece of the Berlin Wall that has not been thorned down.
• Reichstag: the German parliament