If you’re reading these in order, then following our time in Gdansk, our next destination was Berlin in Germany. We headed to Gdansk Glowny on a cold Thursday morning for our 7:30am train to Berlin Hauptbahnhof which was around a 6 hour direct train journey. A pretty smooth train journey to be honest, except the almost non-existent luggage space unless you had a tiny case, and when travelling with Emma, that’s never the case.
We arrived into Berlin a little bit before 2pm, and then just hopped into a taxi and headed to where we were staying for the next few days – The Circus Hostel, in Berlin’s Mitte district. There’s nothing worse than travelling for a long-ish period of time and then have to drag luggage around public transport and then unfamiliar streets in search of your accomodation.
A little bit of an oversight by us, but the Berlin Marathon was on while we were visiting, so as expected, accomodation was on the pricey side. However, the Circus Hostel was spot on for everything we needed – perfect location, our own room, good vibes, and the facilities were good. No complaints.
As with any place we visit for the first time, it’s off for a wander we went, and given that we could see the TV Tower in the distance down a road, that’s where we headed.
We spent some time around the Alexanderplatz area, grabbed a spot of lunch, fought off all the wasps trying to eat our ice cream, and then continued on our wanders down towards the Brandenburg Gate. We wanted to go up the TV Tower, but decided to save this until our last night and around the time of sunset, a little risky if we screwed the times up but you’ll see down the page – we nailed it!
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is just around the corner from the Brandenburg Gate so we headed there to spend some time wandering through the 2711 columns which create a maze-like Holocaust Memorial.
Uhhh, the problem with writing these blog posts about a month and a half after actually visiting these places, I start to forget how each day went, and have to look at my images to refresh my memory. However, I have no images for the rest of the day after visiting the Holocaust memorial, so I think we just grabbed some munch and chilled out around our hotel. Travel days are always tiring!
Here’s some more shots from our first day wanders in Berlin.
First point of call on our second day in Berlin was the Reichstag Building where you can visit the roof terrace and dome, but as it is a Parliament building you must book online, and I had left it so late to do this that there was no slots available for when we were there. It’s fair to say that Emma was pretty gutted about this, so I kept checking each day before we went away and managed to get a slot for like 8am or something… at least it got us out of bed nice and early!
The views from the roof terrace were pretty great though, and the dome itself is spectacular!
Before all the roads around Berlin centre started to close because of the Berlin Marathon, we wanted to hop on our trusty City Sightseeing buses. We jumped on the ‘A’ tour and took this for a while until it got to the Checkpoint Charlie stop where we got off so we could spend some time here and then the Berliner Mauer Gedenkstaette which was nearby.
We then jumped back on the City Sightseeing bus but this time got on the ‘B’ tour and headed to the East Side Gallery to check out the 1316m long section of the Berlin Wall.
The bus stopped at the East Side Gallery main section for around 20 minutes or so, giving you some time to check out the wall, and as it was nearing the end of the bus service, we made the most of these 20 minutes and then got back on the bus for the remainder of the ‘B’ tour.
That was pretty much all there was to note of our second day in Berlin, we just grabbed some food and beer at the nearby Hackescher Markt, which is definitely worth checking out if you’re in Berlin. Great vibes and plenty of choice!
Below are some extra shots from our second day in Berlin.
Our third day in Berlin and we were off on a walking mission again, this time we were heading through the Tiergarten and down to the Victory Column which you can climb for a small price… all about getting those views!
After spending some time taking in the views from the top of the Victory Column, we headed back up through the Tiergarten to the Brandenburg Gate, and by this point, there was some inline skating going on for the Berlin Marathon, and things were getting a little hectic around this area.
There weren’t many other things that we were wanting to check out in Berlin to be honest, we had basically done all the main things we wanted to except for going up the TV Tower (which we were to do in the evening), and the Berlin Wall Memorial which was relatively close to our hotel.
We left it a little bit late to get to our booked time for the TV Tower at sunset, so rushed back from the Berlin Wall Memorial and headed to Alexanderplatz.
We booked our fast view tickets online, which was super easy, and the whole process from arriving at the tower to getting up to the top of the tower was super smooth as well, no complaints.
It was pretty busy up there, but the view is pretty special, and the sunset was great. Enjoy.
The next morning we had a 9am train from Berlin Hauptbahnhof to Prague, so another chilled night was on the cards in preparation for another travel day.
We booked nearly all of our train tickets through the respective countries rail websites by the way, just to avoid any extra charges from external companies and what not.
Onwards to Prague!
thomaslindie 