Day two.
Eight espresso's, an eccentric sausage taster and a 'gay yoghurt'.
The Siegessäule.
Winger is a late riser. He doesn't know where he is until around 10 am. So, we met at 10 am. His two pasties were still in the fridge. Bastard!
Although Mark told us he wasn't going to be a tour guide, he had little choice. We said we would like to see the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. So, he guided us.
We walked along a wide street between the Tiergarten and up to the tall Siegessäule.
We turned right and walked eastwards along the Strasse des 17. Juni
Strasse des 17. Juni between the Teirgarten, looking to the east
towards the Brandenburg Gate.
It was a long walk in the summer sun even though it was still morning. We spotted a cafe of sorts between the trees and made a beeline for it. We were all hungry and thirsty. It was self service. The guys went first. I was last. I have to admit that I'm not a 'coffee person'. In fact, I'm an 'ignorant non-coffee person'. I know nothing about coffee but coffee was all they had. So, at the machine, I selected 'Espresso' and pressed the button. A very small amount entered my cup. "The machine isn't working properly" I thought, so I pressed it again...and again...and again. Actually, I pressed it eight times and it, eventually, filled the cup. I chose croissants and butter and jam and went to the check out. The lady added it all up and charged me for a café crème. I wandered off back to the guys. They were all sniggering. They had spotted my antics at the coffee machine. I told them all "bollox" and ate my breakfast. While I was eating, they reckoned up the cost of my café crème. It had cost me Euro 1.80. An espresso was E2.40. 8 X 2.40 = E19.20. I enjoyed my breakfast but I did heed the guy's warning not to drink all the coffee. I drank half of it.
Winger had a sausage. The sausage wasn't unusual - it was a spicy German sausage. He nibbled at it, muttered something like..."mmmm" and had another nibble. This went on for a while. He offered it around but we all refused after he had had his mouth round it. That conversational sausage had us in giggling for an hour at least. Winger is a chef of sorts as well as an author. He believes he is as good as Delia Smith, the famous cook and director of Norwich City F.C. He spends a lot of time with Delia in their director's box. I can imagine that sausage would have been the main topic of their conversation when next they met. I didn't want to spoil his sausage fantasy by telling him that when I saw the sausages, they were covered in flies! Perhaps that had something to do with the "wonderful spicy taste" it had :-)
We moved on towards the East, past the impressive, but Bolshie, Soviet War Memorial which was flanked by a couple of dilapidated tanks and onto the very impressive Brandenburg Gate.
The Brandenburg Gate or Tor.
I've seen this monument so many times on TV but it was quite an experience to actually stand beneath it. It oozed history. We spent some time discussing the merits or otherwise of the surrounding buildings. I was of the opinion that it should have been totally isolated and that the adjacent modern buildings detracted from it's grandeur. I didn't like that. Its all about opinions - eh? Whatever, we were all impressed and I left it in a thoughtful disposition. My main thought was why they allowed it to be surrounded by a conglomeration of clowns on stilts and fucking jugglers? Ferfuxake, it isn't a fucking circus....its the most famous historical monument in Germany! I could weep at times.
Anyways, we toddled off at a leisurely pace. We took a small detour to visit the Holocaust Monument designed by American architect, Peter Eisenman. This controversial memorial to the Jews killed during the holocaust, opened in 2005. The memorial consists of hundreds of grey concrete pillars lined up in a grid formation with undulating paths running between them. The pillars are of different height with the smallest on the outside and the largest in the middle. A strange and melancholy place. The place is vast and difficult to photograph. I pinched the first picture off the net just to show you how big it really is. The second I took myself and the third I took was of the 'guys' entering the place looking like they had just walked off a set in the film 'Reservoir Dogs'.
We moved on to the Reichstag. Another impressive building. I got into the guy's bad book on this one. There was a queue a mile long and I hate to queue so I moseyed them along. Sod 'em....they have half a lifetime to see it if they fancy it that much! Here's a pic of Lee, Tony and Winger leisurely sauntering towards it. They didn't seem that eager to go in! They can read about it in the link I've put if they feel they've missed something.
Next stop was to be the Berliner Dom along the Unter Den Linden. On the way, we came to the Neue Wache War Memorial. Now this is an impressive place!
'Mother With Her Dead Son'.
The Bronze figure is a wonderful sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz. It's called 'Mother with her Dead Son'. The sculpture is housed in an old building with Doric pillars. You could easily walk past it and dismiss it as a Town Hall, especially if you're from Longton!.
Longton Town Hall? No, this is Neue Wache War Memorial.
I'm glad we didn't mistake it for a town hall. Not much moves me in the way this did. Perhaps that's because, with a little imagination, even on a sunny and warm day like this, the hole above the figure is open to the elements and the thought of rain and snow falling on this figure in the dead of winter was sobering. I think this is the most meaningful and beautiful sculpture I've ever seen. I'm glad my Longton nstincts didn't work that day. 'Arty Farty' Winger was almost jizzing over it [and he's a 'modernist'] so that tells you something. If you ever visit Berlin, don't miss it! By the way, the exterior is riddled with marks from the battle of Berlin which came at the end of the second world war. Most of the older buildings in Berlin which have escaped complete demolition carry these same scars. That phenomena affected Tony a lot. It's not often he has seen at first hand, the ravages that enveloped Europe when his dad was a lad. We moved on.
The Berliner Dom. This is a splendid church. It's not really old as churches go but it is impressive nevertheless. We wandered around the outside but didn't go in because my principles won't allow me to pay to go into a church. Besides, I was getting hungry again and dying for a drink. Here's a few pics of the church.
Winger, Tony and me taking a rest at The Berliner Dom.
We moved on. We crossed over the river and had lunch. Nothing special about the lunch except Winger's Yoghurt. Here it is!
Who but an AWAG gayer would be seen to be eating that! Merk will give him hell
when he sees it ;-)
We moved on again. Next stop was the Fernsehturm, the gigantic TV Tower close to the Alexanderplatz. When we visited, it was decorated like a football for the World Cup of 2006. Here's a picture I took of it.
And here are some I took from the top. Click on these thumbnails to enlarge them.
Very impressive views from the top.
That was it for the afternoon. We took the underground back to the Hotel and changed for the evening. We then went to visit the centre of Berlin. We had a nice meal, saw some of the sights and then retired to the hotel where the '80's clique' spent the rest of the night arguing and debating the music. I just drank a few beers and spaced out. It had been a long day but a very enjoyable one. I slept well that night. I needed it, we had hired a car for the following day and we intended visiting the Olympic Stadium as well as the childhood haunts of Mark and Lee. we would then go on to Potsdam for the rest of the day. We had also planned a special evening too! ;-) [More on that later] Here are a few pictures of the centre of Berlin at night.
Lee doing a 'Winger'.
The following pictures are of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
