Touring Berlin

So I had my packet, I knew where the race start was (and when!) so I was free to play all day. I decided to kick off the day with a double-decker bus tour around the city. They have these buses that stop at 15 different places that you can jump on or off whenever you want. I picked a few places I wanted to stop and had my plan. Well, because of street closures for the marathon the next day, they were ending the tour at 2, so I abbreviated my plan, and planned to go back after 2 and hit the other sites via U-bahn. Easy enough! I hopped on at 10, happy that the bus tour started at a church that I wanted to see and mall phantasmagoria place that several people said I couldn’t miss (Ka De We…..seriously, don’t miss it…but I’ll get back to that in a sec.) and started my tour. The bus is equipped with headphones and you can get the audio tour in 5 different languages. It was great! I rode for a few stops, enjoying the open air top deck of the bus, and the sights, and hopped off at one of the art museums that I wanted to see. I strolled around with the free audio tour at the museum and enjoyed some seriously cool artwork, including a bunch of Rembrandt stuff. (my mom always took us to the art museums when we were little, and being an art history major, she knew all the artists and we’d ooooohh and ahhhh at the ones she seemed particularly impressed with. Well, I didn’t have the external cues this time, so I gauged importance by whether it had a little audio tour number by it or not! (and if I liked it!) It was a gorgeous gallery, with some really great art.

At about noon, I hopped back on the bus. The last stop (15) was a palace that I read was pretty neat, so I decided to ride around to the palace (about an hour and a half ride) do the palace, then head back to hit the Jewish museum and a few other places I wanted to go to. We rode by a place where there is still a large section of the wall standing, and checkpoint Charlie, and a bunch of other reminders of what this city used to be. Fascinating and scary and wonderful to see how far it’s come. It really is a beautifully modern and wonderfully clean and positive city. We rode along the river and saw the boat tours (on the plan for after the marathon) and all the outdoor cafes with lounge chairs on the shore. Beautiful!

I got to the flea market at stop 14 and decided to change the plan. The palace was going to be a lot of sightseeing, and I might not get to some of the other stuff that I wanted to see more, AND stop 14 was at a cool outdoor flea market that looked like too much fun, so I jumped off the bus and found the wildest collection of crazy crap you’ve ever seen on sale in the middle of a city anywhere. There were several guys who had doorhandles. Tons and tons of doorhandles on their table and nothing else. There were knife, fork and spoon guys. Vendors with furs and furnature. Old toys, china, dusty old jewelry, and generally a whole bunch of crap that was really fun to poke around.

Once I was bored with that, I grabbed a bread with cheese and a bottle of water, and wandered through the Tiergarten, the largest public park in the city, with tons of paths and lakes and lovely trees. It’s the central park of Berlin. I got totally lost, but didn’t really care and finally figured out where I was, and wandered back to the place where the tour had started, the Kaiser Wilhelm Kirche (church) and SHOPPING! But first, I had to sample some more of the local cuisine and sit on the steps of the church and enjoy my Nutella and bannanen crepe. OH MY GOD I’m in HEAVEN! Banana is good for potassium for race prep….crepe is carbs, right? And Nutella is just good for the soul! It was great.

The old part of the church is totally in ruins. Half of the top is busted off, the stone is all broken but there is still a main area on the ground floor that you can tour around, read about the place, and the ceiling and floor mosaic are beautiful! Gold and intricate. Gorgeous. The new part is in stark contrast on the outside. They are a completely different look, but the new part is so cool! It looks like a high-rise apartment building from the outside, with teeny tiny windows going all the way up, with a little gold cross at the top BUT when you go inside, you realize that the windows are all a deep blue, and when you’re in the actual worship hall, everything is a deep blue, like you’re underwater. It was REALLY really cool! That was my kind of church!

After that, it was time to shop! I’d picked up an adorable black hat the day before while poking around in the shops at Alexander Platz. I was in search of a cool jacket, or scarves. Well, I found an adorable argyle sweater, but no jacket. Oh well, I’ll just have to go shopping some more at home!

Then to the famous Ka De We food floor. Someone said it was like Dean and Deluca and crack. Someone else said it was like nothing you’d ever seen before. Well….they were right! The 7th floor of this huge department store was all food. High end grocery store food, prepared foods, stop and eat there foods. Moet had a little bar area. There was seafood, grille, meats, asian, wurst (of course!) an egg stand, enough cheese to stop up the whole…well, you know. They had everything! I of course had asian because when in Ro….whatever! I love Asian food, and had already had my typical Berlin dinner. Plus, one of the things I read is that Berliners love all kinds of ethnic foods, and Italian and Asian restaurants were more plentiful than traditional German restaurants. So I had a lovely little dim sum plate and a Tiger beer that went down very smoothly….so much so, that I had another. Then it was time to move on, but I must say, if you’re ever in Berlin, go to this place. It was insane.

So, hopped back on the U-bahn, and off to Checkpoint Charlie and the Jewish museum. Checkpoint Charlie was a famous “border” crossing area between West and East Germany. The little guard shack and signs were all still there, and a big display talking about the wall and East and West Germany and all that. Oh, and from the sublime to the ridiculous, there was a guy standing by this display giving out flyers to the Curry Wurst museum which was right around the corner. You’ve got to be kidding me! I popped over, but it was 11 Euro to get in. Seriously? $15 to see a sausage museum? Well, the outside was nice. Then I headed through Checkpoint Charlie, and down to the Jewish Museum.

Who knew it was Rosh a Shanna? And of course they’re closed on Jewish holidays. I was bummed because this is supposed to be a really neat museum with some very poignant use of space and structure. Well, the outside was cool. I’ll hit it next time.

At this point it was about 6:30, and I was ready to get off my feet, after all, I had a marathon to run the next day. By the map, I was a close hop skip and a jump back to the hotel, so I set off again to wander my way back to the hotel. I suddenly found myself way off from where I thought I was, but a few minutes later I was back on track, and walked through some very nice neighborhoods along the way. Also saw where someone had graffiti’d “tomato”. Now what do you suppose would possess someone to graffiti “tomato”?? And a fun playground that I’m sure my nieces would love.Back to the hotel, laid down for a nap, and then went down to the outside courtyard in the hotel for a nice pre-race dinner (and beer!) I had some of the best tomato soup I’ve ever had in my life, and snacked on a flambé torte or something like that. It’s a pizza basically. Mind had crème fresche, chicken, corn and cheese. It was delicious and enough for an army! I sat outside wrapped in the blanket they had on each chair (nice touch as the evenings were a bit chilly) and read my book, enjoyed my beer and the quiet. Ahhhhhhh.

Then Matt and Adriana got back from Prague, we caught up for a few minutes, made plans for the next day and headed off to bed.