Once again to Berlin

My daughter wanted to travel with me again, and she decided on Berlin. That didn't bother me, as I know the city well and my last visit was some time ago.

So on a summer day, we went to the new old airport BER, which finally opened last October after a 14(!) year construction period. It looked like an ordinary airport, nothing special but nicer and more spacious than the one in Vienna. We took the train to the main train station, where the hotel was located and where we had reserved rooms. The rooms were already ready for occupancy, so we could start right away. We first went to Alexanderplatz, which is lovingly called 'Alex' by the Berliners. Here you can find the red town hall, green areas, and of course the TV tower, which is a whopping 220m high and opened in 1969. We went to the viewing platform at 203m, where you have a really great view of the capital of Germany. Afterwards, we strolled to Kurfürstendamm, formerly the most beautiful shopping street in the city. We saw the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and went to eat. Strengthened, we continued to the most famous landmark of this city. That's right - the Brandenburg Gate. Here you can feel both the past and the present. Right next to it is the Reichstag building where decisions for the EU are made. The Brandenburg Gate used to be the sector border to the GDR and was accordingly secured. Nowadays, you can naturally view, drive through, and enjoy it from all sides.

I didn't notice anything of the terrible recent past anymore; rather, it is heavily used to make money. In any case, we ended the first day with a trip to the famous Checkpoint Charlie. It is called that because there were 3 crossings from West to East Berlin at that time. Today it looks inconspicuous, in a narrow alley and surrounded by souvenir shops.

On day 2, we started with a walk through the Tiergarten to the Brandenburg Gate, whereby the Tiergarten is not a zoo, but rather a district. We found that a bit confusing. In any case, the path was beautiful, led through green areas and along beautiful, old neighborhoods. From there, we continued hiking to Alex, where we took a hop-on-hop-off bus that took us around the whole city. I like riding such a bus because it gives you a good impression of a city in a short time, and you can get on and off wherever you want.

In the evening, we went to the Ice Bar, which is a bar that is cool in the truest sense of the word. You drink and admire the bar, which is completely made of ice, at temperatures far below 0 degrees.

Time flew by so quickly, and the last day was already there. We went to the zoo, this time the real one, whose highlight was pandas, but otherwise seemed rather small and somehow squeezed into a green area.

Berlin is always worth a trip, and it was nice to go there again, especially in such pleasant company.