In November, in fact one month ago today! I was in Berlin with my friend Lisa to see Garbage play as a birthday treat, and since I had absolutely no time at all for tourism the last time I was there I thought I had better see some sights the next day.
Berlin is an absolutely amazing place I definitely recommend people go there at least once while in Europe, all the better if you enjoy clubbing since there are some phenomenal venues in East Berlin.
So here are a few pictures I took, sadly we ended up in LEGOLAND for a lot of the day, and missed a lot of good opportunities for other pictures hehe.
First up the Berlin Cathedral, we didn't go inside, but it is a fairly impressive building as cathedrals go.
The Altes Museum (Old Museum) is a museum for antiquities, and was really rather impressive too, sadly didn't have time to go inside for a look around since we were running to catch a tour group, which we also failed... we were not great at the whole tourism thing that day.
These various statues were all scattered about the place between the museum and the meeting point for the non-existent tour group, but they were quite pretty and more than a little disturbing so I had to take pictures of these too.
I have no idea who this man on the horse is since I had no local guide to tell me, but I would imagine he was probably quite the local badass in his day. (revision note: apparently this was the King of Prussia, so I may have understated how much of a badass he actually was a little bit)
These next two photos are of the Ampelmännchen, he is kind of a big deal in Berlin, since he has a whimsical hat and a brisk stroll about him compared to most pedestrian crossing characters, you can buy this on T-Shirts, Mugs, Shot Glasses... whatever you can imagine as a souvenir gift.
Next I will cover a few of the important landmarks, as represented by LEGO, and then their real world counterparts! Firstly the Berlin Cathedral again.
Here is the Brandenburg Gate, originally built to symbolize peace, later used as a crossing point for the Berlin Wall, now just a rather cool piece of architecture, you can learn more about this in the Wikipedia link below.
This is the Reichstag, which is basically the government building, it has a rather cool inscription on the front "Dem Deutschen Volke" which translates to "To the German People"
And here is the real Brandenburg Gate (We got out from LEGOLAND a little late to take any better pictures, and didn't yet have a tripod to get nice night shots)
And here is the real Reichstag! And that people is a wrap... sorry this post is not more exciting, but writing a post so long after actually doing it makes it harder to recall interesting facts.
References:
LEGOLAND Discovery Centre Berlin -
http://www.legolanddiscoverycentre.de/berlin/en/
The Brandenburg Gate -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_Gate
The Reichstag -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_(building)
Berlin Cathedral -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Cathedral
Altes Museum -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altes_Museum
NEXT POST! Shall be Edinburgh for the Hogmanay Street Party on New Years Eve!
