Back to Germany for a Beer

Little late on the update here, been bouncing around between cities for a little while now!

From Paris I jumped on a night bus bound for Frankfurt, from here I would change buses bound for Heidelberg in Germany. I had read good things about Heidelberg, and an old mate from school just moved to a small town close by, Wiesloch.

I spent the day exploring Heidelberg before heading down to Wiesloch to catch up with Scott. Heidelberg is the first smaller, traditional town in Germany I had been to and I thought it was awesome! The main attractions in the city are an old bridge and a castle up on the hill overlooking the town, both of which I visited.

From here I jumped on a local bus bound for Wiesloch. Catching up with Scott after a few years was great. We had a few beers at his local bar before heading back to Heidelberg for a night on the town.

The next day I caught a lift with Nelson and a friend he met in Belgium who offered us a ride to Munich for Oktoberfest.

Arriving late in Munich we got to Oktoberfest not long before everything closed, but made sure to wake up a little earlier the next day to check out the festivities.

Oktoberfest is massive. Nelson and I got in around 11am and even by then most of the indoor tents were packed or reserved. People were everywhere. It was a little different to what I expected - its more like a carnival than beer tents. The streets are lined with stalls where you can win prizes by shooting or throwing balls. Food stalls are everywhere.

Eventually we found a spare table and had a few of the 1L steins of beer. The service is good - you sit down, waiters take your order and money, beer comes to you.

I'm glad I made it to Oktoberfest to see what all the fuss is about. I think it would be a great few days out if I had a bigger group of lads and got in early enough to enjoy the atmosphere in the tents. I went in not really knowing much about it, and it was a little different to my perceptions!

Hamburg - not just hamburgers

Next stop from Copenhagen on the way to Holland was Hamburg, another seven or so hour bus ride away.

Hamburg is very different to Berlin; Berlin was held in a state of disarray following WWII and the shared occupation by the Allies and Soviets, while Hamburg was a thriving independent city. Despite the name, the Hamburgers were better in Berlin.

While there I did a walking tour and explored some of the city. One of the more notable buildings is the Chilehaus building from the 1920's; designed to look like a sailboat to show homage to Hamburg's port city roots.

Following this I climbed the St Michaelis church tower to get a perspective of the size of the city. The large tower you can see in the photo below is St Nikolai's church, unfortunately most of which had been bombed out during WWII and was in scaffolding today. This church was easily the biggest I'd seen in Europe to date. 

Next up was a walk to the warehouse district. These warehouses were used as storage for trade goods when Hamburg was a major European trading town. Built outside the main city walls they offered a way to avoid taxes on goods at the time!

It's worth noting that Hamburg was the first German city to be bombed outside of gaining military advantage - it was targeted as a civilian city. The town was fire bombed by the RAF and USAAF in an effort dubbed Operation Gomorrah  - due to the proximity to the water and the town being a windy city, the result was a fireball inferno in the town centre.

Over 42,000 causalities resulted from the week-long Allied bombing run. The site of the St Nikolai's church has been set up as a memorial to those who died during WWII. 

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!