Berlin 2023 – Day Three – It’s Sunday Again!

The plan had been for there to have been a male/female split today with the former going up the TV Tower and the latter doing some shopping. This plan was quickly scuppered when we discovered that today is, like in the UK, a public holiday but, unlike in the UK, it is taken a bit more seriously and all the shops were shut (again)—time for a rethink.

Instead, we walked the streets of Berlin taking in the sights (I’m still looking hideous so I have to wear my sunglasses so I don’t frighten small children!). Berlin’s an attractive place but much has been rebuilt over the last 50 years (thanks to the British) and the buildings you see have been rebuilt to look old. Something like 64% was destroyed so there was a lot of rebuilding that needed to be done.

We walked over to the Tower to check out what was around there and then on to Alexanderplatz which was, to put it mildly, a bit of a disappointment. The place had been advertised as the meeting place but I could only imagine the sorts of people that might meet there and it wasn’t people like us so we walked back to the central part of town.

Sailing down the Spree

We decided that we’d all had enough of walking by this point and so decided to take a relaxing boat trip down the river that runs through Berlin. To be honest I’d have been hard-pressed to name the river and it took a quick Wiki to discover that it’s called the Spree.

The boat first headed upstream through what you might call the parliament district. On one bank you can see the old and stateful Reichstag which holds the debating chamber and on the other, actually spanning both banks, the very modern administrative offices (you can see an example below). The contrast is quite stark.

The boat then turns and heads downstream as far as the lock taking in places such as museum island and the old town, most of which seems to have been rebuilt but retains the look of how it would have originally been. In some places, you get a curious hybrid such as the Humboldt Forum which has a traditional frontage and a modern side facing the river.

Wait for the lights

I seem to have a fascination with the figures used on pedestrian crossing lights and end up taking pictures of them. Turns out that I am alone not as “Ampelmann” (literally little traffic light man) has a cult following with shops selling all manner of things with his design and formed in his shape. It seems to have been one of the few things that have been retained from East Germany with its reputation intact.