Berlin, Germany

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!

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Over the weekend I randomly visited Amsterdam, which was one of the best impulse trips of all time. Most people would have gone there sooner since it is only 4 hours away from where I am living in Hannover, but I guess I had never really thought of it as somewhere high on my list since I am not a traditional "lets go to Amsterdam and smoke legal joints" type of tourist. What you will find in Amsterdam away from the "coffee shops" and the red light district; is a city filled with interesting buildings, beautiful canals, and rich history. 

 

Admittedly I did not get as long as I would have liked to see everything, but I did find time to visit the Anne Frank Museum which was one of the most moving experiences I have had in Europe.
I had "The Diary of a Young Girl" read to me by a teacher when I was quite young, and I remember even then I wanted to know what happened after the book ended, it sparked that curiosity about the Holocaust and how such a thing could happen. To an 8 year old, the concept of such a thing was really quite alien. So walking through the warehouse where the Frank family was hidden during the war, seeing the photos of actors and actresses Anne had cut out of the magazines that had been smuggled to her by her fathers business partner. It was really quite traumatizing. 

So to recover from that, bicycle riding around the canals as well as various photo opportunities.

One interesting thing my friend Ben taught me about Amsterdam is that the buildings are built on a very slight lean, this was to facilitate raising and lowering things from street level without obstructing any of the other levels or having the object bashing against the side of the building.

A good example of just how popular a bicycle is in Holland, that particular well known fact is very accurate.

And here are some very random things I stumbled across while wandering about, this was just a strange window...

And some very strange street art...

And apparently these girls were having an awesome "Wheres Wally?" party!

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam - the Wikipedia entry for Amsterdam

http://www.annefrank.org/ - the webpage of the Anne Frank Museum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_frank - the Wikipedia entry for Anne Frank

Hannover Zoo, Hannover, Germany

This post should be a little more fun, my day began by wandering into the city to complete some of my residence paperwork and to be fingerprinted by the foreigners department, once all of that was out of the way I was so cheerful that I thought I might visit a beer garden properly.
Along the way I was speaking to a friend on the phone and spotted a sign that said Zoo... the general consensus was that I immediately head to the Zoo.

As it turns out it was really fun! And there was still a beer garden where I sneaked a few drinks before heading home.  The price of an adult ticket is 23 euros, very much worth it, and there were numerous souvenir shops, ice cream, coffee etc along the way

It was a disturbingly hot day, and I was experimenting a little with my telephoto lens since most of the animals were not particularly excited to come right up to within decent photo range.

Eingang! One of the few German words I already know which means entry (for pedestrians) if this was for cars it would be an Einfahrt.  The opposite is an Ausgang (for pedestrians) and an Ausfahrt for cars.... see education happens all the time!

This creature is awesome, he kinda reminded me of E.T

And I really liked these things, just chilling out upside down snacking on stuff and being cute

I assure you this wolf is not dead, it was just such a hot day it was incapable of much beyond lying on the ground panting and occasionally flailing about

These are not meerkats!

You might remember this bird from such other internet pictures as "O RLY?"

The guinea pig town was a harsh reminder just how close humankind is to total eradication at the hands of small rodents... I forgot to get pictures of the rest of their town, but they had shops and houses too, fairly soon they will begin using tools and when they do, we are all in trouble

And lastly, my favourite creatures on earth....