Berlin Day2

On my second day in Berlin, I was faced with grim weather. Cloudy, cold and snow. I was prepared for it. The best thing to do was to see the museums and the indoors of the places. I started out by going to Potsdamer Platz, a famous area, supposedly. I didn’t find anything interesting there, except for a mall.

I quickly moved to “Topography of the terror” exhibition, which is built on the former SS HQ. It gives a lot of history and information about the rise of Nazi regime, their brutality and their fall. The place was used for many executions, and you can feel the sadness in the air when you are there. Since I am interested in history, I spent some good amount of time there reading about it.

It was very cold outside with temperature hovering around -6 and real feeling of -12. With snow all around it was quite an experience. After finishing the exhibition I walked towards “Checkpoint Charlie”, which was a checkpoint between east and west Berlin after the division. There were three checkpoint, this being the third. “Alpha”, “Bravo” and “Charlie” !! This has been depicted in a lot of movies. The movie “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” starts here.

It had a more description about how it started, when the wall was built, escape stories and how it got demolished. There were people dressed up as American soldiers asking for money to take photos with them (usual touristic crap).

It started snowing again and I moved towards the underground, to reach Kaiser Wilhem Memorial Church. Once a magnificent church, but now just a reminiscent of what is was.

Destroyed during the second world war, it is in the process of being renovated. Nevertheless, still quite good from inside.

I took an S-Bahn to outskirts of Berlin to go to Schloss Charlottenburg, the royal palace. Although I wanted to see it from inside, but I found out that a part of it was closed for renovation. I may go again to see it next time from inside.

It was getting really very cold and I decided to go to my hostel and relax a bit. I stayed inside the hostel and then went to the bar downstairs after a while. The Belushi bar offered cheaper drinks to the residents of the hostel and of course I used that offer. There were many travellers and many Spanish speakers. I met a guy, who was on a trip to Europe and came from Argentina. We had few drinks and talked about places to go in Berlin. In the morning, I met a Spanish couple looking for some help at the ticket vending machine on a deserted platform. I helped them in the morning with my rusty Spanish and limited knowledge of German. I found out that they were also staying in the same hostel. So, in the evening I just went to say Hi to them. We chatted for a while and then, I decided to go outside again.

Night had fallen and it was a perfect night to do some night photography. I went to Brandenburger Tor once again to click it in the night.

Majestic TV tower

I clicked some photos and came back walking towards Alexanderplatz station. The TV tower was looking majestic in the night. It was getting colder and I was tired, so I decided to go back to my room and call it a day.