Germany

After spending the night at our relative’s house the next morning we drove to the Koln (pronounced Kolone) to take a train to Berlin (we left our mum in Belgium and we’ll meet up in Venice).  The train journey lasted 4-5 hours and we travelled in first class, it was quite an experience!  After arriving we found our way to the exit and met our cousin and we stayed with her for the time we were in Berlin.  The traffic was terrible and it took almost 1 hour to get to the apartment.   The apartment we were staying in was spacious and was a lot better than I thought it would be and the good thing was that we were right next to several restaurants, so we didn’t need to walk far to get some food!

A Tour through Berlin

The second morning we were in Berlin we went out and travelled on the metro to go to the Berlin city center.  Once we arrived we went around on one of the double decker buses and we toured through and learnt about Berlin’s main sights, like: Checkpoint Charlie, The Victory Statue, The Berlin Wall and much more!

Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall

Throughout WWII Berlin was split into 4 different parts all run by different countries, which are, The Soviet’s (Russians), The English, The Americans and The French.  This is because the whole of Germany was split in half during the war (the West and the East).  The Russians controlled the whole of the West side of Germany and the West half of Berlin and decided to build a wall between the two sides and in the middle was no mans land.  The West side of Germany was the wealthy side and could afford to build and renovate buildings and to get food and water.  In the East side there was no money and it rapidly started to deteriorate so many people tried to escape and go to West Germany, unfortunately that was very hard to do.  The only way to get between the two sides was through a very highly barricaded gate that was called Checkpoint Charlie.  Some people started making smuggling trucks to get people from the East side to the West and regularly failed.  One boy tried climbing over the wall and was shot in the leg in no mans land and left there to bleed to death for 24 hours.  Soldiers came to help from the East side but he was already dead by the time they got there.  The soldiers who shot him were convicted and were sent to jail for 10 years because they shot him without orders.  A part of the wall is still there today to remember what happened back in WWII (there is a lot more info but that is just the summary).

A German Dinner

After a long day of travelling around Berlin we finished the night with a very tasty traditional German dinner.  The waitresses that served you were dressed up in a German outfit that I was told was a very traditional thing in the 1800’s.  For dinner I had a leg of pork with a ring of crackling around the top and it was amazingly tasty and was the best pork I had had in my life!  For drinks I had something called a Spezi (pronounced Spetshi), which is a mixture of Coke and Fanta and was better than the two of them apart.   For dessert I had a delicious apple pies and one other thing (I can’t remember the name). 

The Berlin Zoo

The Berlin Zoo claims to have the most species of animals in the world (approx. 1670).  We used the metro to get there and the zoo wasn’t very exciting mainly because we had seen already heaps of animals on the trip already (Africa).  But we saw heaps of new ones at the zoo too that you couldn’t see commonly in the wild, I managed to see tigers, black panthers, the Black Rhino (we saw the White Rhino on the safaris), a lot of nocturnal animals and animals that live in the arctic like the penguin and the polar bear.  The zoo takes about 3 hours to cover if you’re walking continuously and taking the quickest route, for us it took about 4 hours.  The zoo takes up about 30 hectares of land and has a big wall around it that sort of intimidates people in the feeling that you can’t get out.  The exit we went out of was the original entrance and exit and has an archway with two elephants holding it up (I wondered how long it would last).  We finished the day with smiles on our faces unfortunately knowing that the next day we were going on a train to Prague (or Praha as the Czech’s call it) in the Czech Republic.

We found an Angry Face on the Boat Tour

A Baby Leopard!

A Black Pantha

Me and Steve at Checkpoint Charlie

My yummy German Dinner

Me at the Jewish Memorial that remembers the Jews who were killed in WWII 

Me Touring

A Sleepy Polar Bear

Me at the Brandenburg Gate

A Tiger!

The German Cathedral

A Black Rhino (we saw white ones)