Day 5: Berlin

Wednesday, August 11 2010

We'd gone to bed really early the previous night and now woke up at 9. We started the day by washing some laundry. We didn't have too much clothing with, which meant we needed to wash clothes often.

At 11.37 we were at the train station and went with a Regional Train to Ostbahnhof. We wanted to see the East Side Gallery. It's a part of the wall that was dividing Berlin.

We walked back to the beginning of the wall where we started. Saw the O2-arena, and Sandsation from the outside. There were some holes in the fence that was supposed to prevent people from viewing the sand sculptures from the outside. We didn't want to pay the 5€ to get in, so we took pictures through the fence. Then a French girl asked us for directions on how to get to the Brandenburg gate, and we, the non-locals, told her which way to go. :)

The we spotted a beach bar and ordered Cuba Libres.

From Ostbahnhof we took a train to Westkreuz. There we changed to S41 ring S-bahn going to Westend. We walked to Schloss Charlottenburg. I'd never been there before, and now we just walked around it. We got asked that do we know something about the German phone cards, I guess we looked like locals, but we didn't. 

Eventually we walked back to Westend and went with a S42 to Westkreuz and then an S7 to Potsdam Hbf. At the Hbf we bought milkshakes from McDonald's because we needed some quick energy. It was more like a sunday, not really a milkshake though. 

We started walking towards Potsdam's center. On the way there we got asked for directions once, in German. We understood him and just replied in English. And then we did a little detour. From the Hbf you walk on a bridge and from there you can get to this park so we went there and sat around for a while. 

From the park we walked towards the Nikolaikirche, and then continued on towards the main street of Potsdam. There was this gate type thing and we walked through it, and turned to the right. We saw a building that I'd seen before. I'd actually been inside that building. My friend went to that school. Our hostesses daughter. 

We started walking back. On Brandenburger Str.s end we saw Potsdam's Brandenburg Gate. Then we noticed the time and had to rush back to Potsdam Hbf, we were meeting with our hostess and the other girl who was staying with them. We went to this Italian restaurant in Babelsberg, a part of Potsdam. I got lasagna. We walked back to our accommodation, our hostess was showing us places, where Harry Truman stayed during the Potsdam conference. And where he signed the papers that the USA can drop the atom bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In front of the house there was a monument, that had only been there for a month or so when we were there. The house is right by Griebnitzsee, the lake. Glienicker Brücke is the bridge with two colors: light and dark green. We continued on, and to the Babelsberg film studios, they had the sets from The Pianist there for example. The sets are Berliner Strasse. 

We got home, and our hostess said she hadn't received a reply from the camping site in Innsbruck. She called them and reserved us a place for our tent. For some reason the camping place asked for the language that we speak, I don't know why. We said English, because listing Finnish, English, Russian, German, Swedish and French would've been too difficult. "Well, we both speak Finnish and English. She speaks Russian and has studied French. I've studied Swedish, German and French..." No, thanks, English is good enough.

-Pinky