Day 82: Berlin by Foot

Date: Wednesday 18^th June
Staying: Camping Sanssouci-Berlin – Potsdam, Germany
Distance Travelled:0 Miles
Song of the day: The Wall – Pink Floyd

Berlin is a city with such an incredible amount of history. Even if you only studied the 20^th century of Berlin, it would be enough to keep you busy for the rest of your life. To fill in the gaps for us, we decided to take a walking tour of Berlin.

Our tour guide was Mike from Wellington. Yep, a kiwi. He’d even studied at Massey, so we felt right at home. Boy did he know his stuff though. The walking tour was meant to take 4 hours, and after 5 ½ we finally finished at the Brandenburg Gates. The tour started in the west of Berlin, where we took a train to the east, and trailed through Museum Island, Unter der Linden, the Book Burning Memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, a fragment of the Wall, the new Jewish Memorial and finally round to the Reichstag, with Mike keeping up a (totally understandable to New Zealanders) dialogue the whole way around, his “800 years of German History in 8 minutes” being a particular highlight.

There is simply too much information to convey even the gist of what he told us in the five hours. I’ve sometimes found walking tours a bit dry, but there was no chance of this here. He commented on how few New Zealanders come on the tour (though he was blessed with 4 that day), and we were rewarded with a copy of a photo that he keeps for Kiwis on the tour. The photo, taken before the Berlin wall fell, shows a map of New Zealand spray painted in red, along with the inscription “Aotearoa. Greetings to nuke-free New Zealand”. He also managed to take us to the only cafe in Germany that serves a decent coffee.

After this mammoth effort, we decided to take the rest of the day a bit easy. We both realised that we needed another day in Berlin, so did a little souvenir and book shopping before retiring to the comfort of the van. Well, I did anyway. There seems to be something called the “European Championships” on at the moment, and it causes Cam to spend a long time in the camp bar. The perfect excuse for me to catch up on my sleep.