Wie Gehts Berlin

Berlin, a town with so much history it is almost too much to take in.

I went on another walking tour to check out the main sights on offer in Berlin, starting at the Brandenburg Gate.

An interesting tidbit I picked up from the tour was the significance of the statue sat atop the gate. The gate was built as a sign of peace, in Pariser Platz (Paris Square), with the goddess of Victory and her chariot on top. In the late 1700's Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Berlin and took the statue to be returned it to Paris. It was then retaken in the 1800's following a military defeat. Great sign of peace.

From here we walked over to check out one of the remaining sites of the Berlin wall. The guide explained how this was the third iteration of the "wall", originally it was simply a roll of razor wire dividing the East and West. 

Not far from here was a commemorative memorial to those Jews that suffered under Hitler's regime. Thousands of stone pillars of varying sizes are marked to represent those that died.

Below is a French cathedral in Berlin, with services only being given in French. 

The tour was an overload on information. Lead by an English history PHD student, the guy really knew his stuff and was very passionate about it. The biggest thing that he tried to make us take away from the tour is how well Germany deals with its past, and how other societies can learn from it. 

The following day I went on a different tour altogether, an alternative walking tour. This was aimed at the underground street art scene which thrives in Berlin, starting from the American occupation of the South West quadrant of Berlin. 

The Australian girl leading the tour explained how the street art scene came to be in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. She explained how certain pieces were created and took us to a few of the more notable ones. 

Following this tour, I took a walk along the East Side Gallery, probably my favourite tourist stop in Berlin. It is a stretch of the Berlin wall that has been covered in sanctioned murals depicting peace and social commentaries surrounding the wall. 

What I found most interesting about Berlin is its economic state. The city is in severe debt - some 60 billion dollars - higher than even Detroit in the US who declared bankruptcy a few years ago. The city is kept alive through both tourism and the thriving Western Germany cities such as Frankfurt. Berlin's population has been on the decline as a result. The city is massive but eerily quiet.

Berlin has a great nightlife scene; it is a youth city after all. Living costs are relatively cheap, laws are a little more relaxed and creativity rules. It will be interesting to see how it progresses in the future - the wall only dropped and reunited the divided Berlin 26 years ago in 1989!