Berlin: Day 1

After an early flight from München, I arrived in at Schönefeld Airport at 9:40. From there I went straight to the brand-new Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) and checked my luggage into the left-luggage depot.

There I encountered my first problem. It's a brand new station (opened in late May this year), so all the entrances and exits aren't completely finished. Being the person that I am, I managed to find one of this unfinished exits and found myself on the street 10 seconds after getting off the train. This in the largest station in Europe!!

So I went back up the same escalators, walked across the platform and down another set. Aahh!!! This place is HUGE! Seriously massive. And it's all glass, so you can see all 3 levels of trains, with at least one train leaving every 90 seconds. Crazy stuff!

So after that little excursion I did a little self-guided walking tour of the area around Berlin Hbf, including the new Reichstag building (and later up it), the Brandenburg Gate, the Soviet memorial, and Unter den Linden. Berlin is under constant construction, especially from the East, and nowhere can you see this better than from the Reichstag, which sits very close to where the Berlin Wall ran. There are cranes everywhere!

The highlight of the day, however, was the tour I went on through two bunkers under the U-Bahn (subway). This was organised by Berlin Underworlds, and was FANTASTIC! It's so interesting - the bunkers themselves were rarely bomb-proof (it was too expensive) and many of the early ones weren't sealed, so were essentially useless in the event of a nuclear attack. The fundamental problem with them was that there was NEVER enough for more than 1.5% of the population, which meant essentially they served as a disperal mechanism.

Our guide described it succiently: In the case of Hurricane Katrina, everyone fled the city, leading to blocked roads in all directions, and thus no emergency supplies could enter the city. In Berlin, instead of everyone leaving, the idea was many would run to the shelter, and by the time they realised they weren't going to fit in any of them, the army etc. would have been able to enter the city. Clever but cynical.

For accomodation in Berlin, I am staying with a friend of a friend - specially Julia, who was in Singapore when I was there, but we only met briefly. She is originally from Bonn, but moved to Berlin last week, and has very kindly offered space on her floor for me! And so we decided to meet in Potsdamer Platz, but having never been there before, I got hopelessly lost (sensing a trend here?!), and failed to find the ALDI (our meeting point).

Eventually it all worked out, we met and had a great Green Curry for dinner. AND it turns out Julia works for the German equivalent of AusAid and is going to Ecuador soon for a development project! Small world!

And now I'm buggered, so I'm off to sleep!

Tchuss!