Berlin

[mathare]

What a beautiful, historical city Berlin is. I heartily suggest you all go visit. But take in more of the sites than I did because I really need to go back having done but a small part of one the friendliest, cleanest cities I have ever visited.

I've always like Germany and have been to Koln and Bonn a few times when I was at school (GCSE/A-Level sort of age). But this was my first trip out to the east side of Germany and I'm really glad it was too Berlin.

We stayed in a dead nice 4* hotel near Checkpoint Charlie and in the few hours between breakfast and the footy we wandered right and saw a few sights. The remains of the Berlin Wall. A great outdoor exhibition on the history of the wall, the Nazis and the Nuremberg war trials. Tiergarten. Brandenburg Gate. The big football thing in Berlin you can see over Gary Lineker's shoulder. Ian Wright and Lee Dixon having dinner with their wives (we exchanged "alright"s). A lot of excellent bars and restaurants. The city itself is so well laid out with excellent public transport (which we only really used to get too and from the Olympic Stadium) but they have really catered for people wanting to watch the World Cup all round the city with dozens of outdoor arenas and the like with huge screens set up.

I had a really good holiday :D

I'll put up some photos sometime in the not too distant future. But the 100 or so of the football, stadium and semi-naked Ukrainian chicks may need some filtering first :)

[GlosRFC]

Yeah, nice place Matt. I was last there when the wall was coming down in 1989 so, although the East was still closed off, they were coming through in droves to take their first look at the "decadent" West. Probably more Trabbants on the street than BMWs and Mercs. If there's one thing the Germans are good at it's integrated transport so getting around Berlin is really easy and, as you say, it's clean too.

When I went it was on one of the last trips of the British Military Train which was like appearing in a chapter of a Le Carre novel. We were locked inside the carriages - not to stop us getting out, but to stop East Germans from jumping on board and claiming asylum.

[bigcumba]

I was there the year after Glos, for the massive Roger Waters concert of 'The Wall'... was quite a place, and very weird walking into the Eastern half of the city with the obvious contrasts in lifestyles and wealth. Spotted a travel agent there... with trips to Moscow, and the seaside ones were to the Russian Black Sea towns... hardly any of the usual big colourful posters though! People were friendly as you found, and thoroughly enjoying their new found freedom!

[Win2Win]

I've been, problem was, there was a bloody big concrete wall around it, and through the middle. Grafitti everywhere!!! Men with guns.....felt like Sam's street :yikes: