all about the wall

last weekend Mark and I went away for the weekend to Berlin. It was wonderful. Very very cold, which meant lots of bobble hats and scarves, but still a lot of fun. We stayed at the Wombat hostel, which I highly recommend – it was right by the U-bahn station, not too expensive, and we had a really nice room with a great view. During our trip we visited  Potsdamer Platz, where we bought our lego people who shared in the fun for the rest of the trip. We went to the  Reichstag, which was interesting, but cold and with a lot of queuing. The Jewish museum was great - there was a fantastic exhibition about religion and food,  and you were able to electronically ‘collect’ recipes which you can later view  online (lots of museums seem to do this sort of thing now, it’s a great idea). The holocaust memorial was cool, with all the big cement blocks, although it was a bit too tempting to run  around wooping and jumping out on people – probably not in the spirit of things! We saw the brandenburg gate – very impressive, and quite a lot of bits of the Wall – there’s a ‘gallery’ of about 300m of wall that’s been decorated with commemorative pictures by lots of artists, some of it was really great. I don’t remember the wall coming down, seeing as I was only 5, but I feel much more educated now about it all! Checkpoint Charlie was interesting, but there were a lot of tourists around. There  was also a very interactive museum about life in the DDR – that was really good fun – I got to be a proper German housewife in a plastic filled kitchen!

The food in Germany was good but not amazing – the warm pretzels were fabulous, and Mark had a pretty impressive club sandwich. He also had kangaroo steak one evening, with potato wedges seasoned with curry powder, which tasted really good. The Germans seem to use curry powder for lots of things – currywurst, potato wedges, in kebab sauce… it’s a nice touch! I’m also a big fan now of Gluhwein with amaretto – very warming and tasty! But the sausages and things were only ok, and most of the bread we had wasn’t as nice as I’d hoped.

All in all, it was a great trip, and a very cool place – apart from the fact that it’s so very freezing, it’s definitely worth a visit!