So, dear reader(s), I left you on a cliff-hanger with my financial worries looming over me like a really big looming thing. Despite all my worries and concerns, I sleep fairly well. I do, however, wake up to a stern lecture from my legs who are not happy with the amount of walking I did yesterday. After some negotiation, they agree to carry on. Outside is a beautiful sunny day, although Accuweather and the doom-laden receptionist still claim there are going to be thunderstorms. I decide to ignore them and head down to fruhstuck.

After yesterdays encounter with what would locally be described as ein grosses fruhstuck, I decide to go for something smaller. Ironically I end up going for the Franzosisches Fruhstuck – after all, when in Germany, why not go French?! When it arrives it is (to my surprise) not obscenely huge – though the bowl of chopped fruit is still a bit weird.

I’ve included a shot of the menu – I dread to think how huge Bismarck and Walters were.

As I work my way through my croissant, I ponder the day ahead: Charlottenberg Palace, the Victory Column and Haus dem Checkpoint Charlie. A friend also wants me to find the Sausage Museum, but I’m not going to expend too much effort on that. Money is still concerning me, but I’ve worked out that my overdraft should be sufficient to keep me going, though things will be tight for the rest of month. I decide to ignore this and enjoy the holiday.

By the time I leave the hotel, it looks like Accuweather is going to be right. It’s clouded over, there are some brisk winds and it’s definitely colder. Accuweather now says it won’t rain – clearly the water descending from the sky is some form of motile water that is previously unknown to science! The Age-Appropriate hoodie is deployed and I head for the bus.

The journey is relatively simple – one bus and one train and then a bit of a walk. The busses still strike me as odd. The drivers can clearly see what is going on upstairs – someone who wasn’t wearing their mask got a severe talking to! Despite that, the seats on the top floors are covered with graffiti. It’s all a little bizarre.

The rain only lasts until I get off the train, when things ease off to the point where it all feels like being at home. I manage to stay dry on my way to the palace and I get there just before the doors open.

Inside the ticket is a steal at 13 Euros and gives access to the old palace, new wing and garden. Entrance comes with an extremely comprehensive audio guide that covers the entire old palace.

This is a truly spectacular place and has been restored extremely well. I only find out just how much has been restored in the first room where there is a computerised demonstration of the history of the palace. This is a top down view that has little people and carriages and wagons running around and reminds me (for no readily apparent reason) of Michael Bentine’s Potty Time (for all you bloody children out there, it was a television show). I’m therefore smiling to myself inappropriately when the screen darkens, searchlights appear and the Allies bomb the crap out of it. I feel vaguely embarrassed but does mean that I appreciate the scale of the reconstruction and restoration.

It takes me over an hour just to go around the old palace, which is remarkably beautiful. Lots of art, lots of silver, lots of. displays. Way too much to talk about in detail, so here’s a montage.

As you can see, their decorator favoured the under-stated approach! 🙂

It is incredibly beautiful and very impressive. There is a level of detail and intricacy that makes Laurence Llewellyn Bowen look like a soberly dressed prison chaplain. And it is in room, after room, after room. The reconstruction is incredible as is their attention to detail. One of the paintings was slashed with a sabre. When they restored the paintings, they made the decision to leave the sabre slashes apparent as they felt this was part of the story of the piece.

The audio guide is very good and by the end of the tour, I have learned various useful facts, which I will now regurgitate for you:

1. The traditional Prussian spiked helmet originated in Russia
2. The Prussian obsession with military uniforms and militaria was started by the aptly named Frederick the Soldier and was, in part at least, a fashion statement
3. Royal beds were very rarely slept in
4. In an audience chamber, you could tell how important you were by whether or not you were offered a seat. If you were, how much the monarch liked you determined whether the seat had arms or a cushion. (I am going to start doing that at work.)
   

It is a stunning place, but I decide not to check out the new wing as I’m feeling a bit “palaced” out. I have the same reaction in art galleries and museums. There’s only so much staring at things I can do before I get restless. Also, there was virtually nowhere to sit down in the palace, so my legs were reminding me of the terms of the entente agreed to this morning.

I decide to call it ein Tag and head off to the Victory Column (aka the much more difficult to spell and pronounce, Siegessaule). When I posted pictures of the column on Facebook, some smart-alec commented that Germany didn’t have any victories to boast of. Well (according to Wikipedia), the Siegessaule was designed by Heinrich Strack to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Second Schleswig War, by the time it was inaugurated on 2 September 1873, Prussia had also defeated Austria and its German allies in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). So there.

I’ve already been past it several times as it has a prominent position in the Tiergarten, so I head over there on a bus. The column is right in the middle of a very busy roundabout, so the first problem is how the hell do I get to it?

I start to walk around the roundabout, traversing the numerous very busy, multi-lane roads that come off it and looking forlornly for a way across. There must be some way as there are people over there. I can even see some of them at the top (in the picture you can just see their heads in the section below the angel).

At this point it’s worth commenting on the tricky nature of crossing roads in Berlin. The crossings I am using are all traffic light controlled, so I’m thinking it should be easy. When the light shows red for me, clearly I do not cross. Foolishly, I assume that when the light is green, I can cross. This is mostly true. it seems as though the pedestrian crossing might be given a green light, but the traffic doesn’t get a red one. As a result, I often find myself nearly mown down by cars, bicycles and fucking e-scooters as they casually charge across the crossing. Everyone else seems to have the same problems as me, so this is clearly normal. I wonder what it will be like in Barcelona and Paris? You never know, you may get the chance to find out!

Anyway, back to the plot (or as much of a plot as Michael Bay ever puts into a film). I’ve got halfway around and still found no way across and can’t see any way across at ground level. I did find this chap though.

Look it’s that bloke they named a Fruhstuck after!! If you’re lucky, he’ll turn up again. (It’s almost like planning has taken place!)

Eventually, I realise that the large concrete building ahead of me isn’t a public toilet, but instead is the entrance to a pedestrian underpass. It is, unusually, completely un-signposted and (of course) there was one right by my bus stop. However, if I’d found it, I would have missed out on that nice Herr Bismarck. (Or “birthmark” as autocorrect keeps insisting).

Anyway, I get across, join the queue and pay my 3.5 euros (not exactly breaking the bank, is it!). There is a large friendly sign telling me that it’s 60 steps to the first viewing platform, and another 230 to the top. My legs are voting for the lower platform, so I trick them by stopping off there for a walk around and another view of Herr Bismarck.

Having lulled them into a false sense of security, the legs and I tackle the rest of climb…

… which is pretty steep. Luckily, the designers have very sensibly put seats at regular intervals. An elderly German lady are united by the lack of a common language and our dislike of stairs and we encourage each other to the top. The viewing area at the top is absolutely packed. There is just enough room to squeeze past people, but the view is excellent. Oh look, there’s that Bismarck chap again!

There’s a superb view towards the Brandenburg Gate.

It’s amazing to think that most of the trees in the Tiergarten were chopped down during and after World War II.

Finally, off to somewhere that is for me one of the most iconic places in Berlin – Checkpoint Charlie. My mastery of the bus and train system is now complete, so after a very slick journey I get to Haus dem Checkpoint Charlie. As I get there, It occurs to me that I haven’t since breakfast, so I head into a shop called Kamps and order a coffee and a slice of butter-streuselkuchen. There is a short discussion when I ask for a smaller slice and find that I can’t have one, so something that probably features in Weight Watchers meetings under the heading “AVOID”, lands on my plate like an elephant steak. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that if the slice of cake is longer than the plate, you either need bigger plates or to serve SMALLER PORTIONS! It is delicious – but I only eat about a quarter of it. The rest gets wrapped up and put in the backpack – and eventually thrown away.

Checkpoint Charlie is weird and, overall, the most disappointing thing about my visit to Berlin. The old checkpoint is just in the middle of the street, and I almost walked past without realising what it was.

The wall itself has completely disappeared, except for a small portion of it which is completely covered in graffiti.

I can’t work out whether the graffiti is deliberate or whether it’s just part of the general graffiti I’ve seen everywhere else. I’m actually disappointed that more of the wall wasn’t kept intact – but I can also understand the desire to rip it down. No worries, I can always buy a piece of it in the sad tourist trap known as the Haus dem Checkpoint Charlie. The museum is over-priced compared to everywhere else I’ve been in Berlin and the shop at the start and end of the tour might as well just be called “The Tourist Trap”. You can buy 99 flavours of total crap here, including “guaranteed” pieces of the wall. No bookmarks though.

The museum itself has a problem – several problems actually. It’s dealing with a sombre and sensitive subject and they have a huge amount of material that they want to try and put over. They also want to put it into a historical context. Personally, I would think this would lend itself to being organised chronologically so that we can understand the political backdrop before being shown the various ways that people tried to escape. Instead, it gives the impression of a collection that someone has built up over time and pieces have just been put in where they will fit. Rather than something like an audio-guide, they have vast screeds of text on the wall – made vaster (more vast?) because they are in multiple languages. And whoever did their translation, is not very good so I find myself struggling to understand what they are trying to say. As a result you have to really concentrate to get anything out of the experience.

My concentration is somewhat impaired by the woman just ahead of me who has decided that this is the ideal place to bring her Jack Russell. It’s okay though, because he’ll stay in her shoulder-bag.

Oops, he got out.

Oops, he got out again.

Oops, well, what a shock, he’s off again.

Oops, you’ll never guess what happened now?

Frustrated, and a little pissed off, I head off for my last visit of the day – Potsdam Plaza. This is meant to be spectacular during the evening, but even during the day it is dominated by some striking modern architecture.

At ground level, I’m intrigued by all the pictures of people and head for a closer look.

Is it art? Some kind of installation? A comment on the diverse communities in the 21st century? No, it’s a fucking advert

They’re trying to say that it’s “art” but actually it’s just an insurance company cynically using diversity as a selling point.

I head on to the Sony Centre.

It’s pretty spectacular, but little more than a frame for a variety of ways to divest me of my money. Seeing as I’m already a bit concerned about that, and my legs are definitely not happy, I decide to head back to the hotel even though it’s only 3pm.

I’ve managed to get to the one part of Berlin where there is no direct bus, so I have a bit of a walk to an appropriate bus stop. It’s beside what would seem to be a car showroom.

This actually the National Gallery, as evidenced by the odd statuary outside.

Hold on! Isn’t that second one from Babylon 5?

Hmm.

I head back to the hotel, aware that I have barely scratched the surface of Berlin. Tomorrow, I’m off to Barcelona and although my flight isn’t until mid-afternoon I won’t really have the chance to sample more of this fascinating city.

I loved it here. The people are friendly, the city is amazing and it feels like I’ve packed a lot into a relatively short time. Now off to the Mediterranean, where apparently it’s a scorcher!