Photobook #5 - Berlin | Germany

I still remember, Berlin was my first trip outside UK when I studied there in 2011. In fact, this trip happened during our first summer break after we finished our summer semester. We simply planned it, only went to Berlin for 3 days but I think it's just enough to cover the important places. Plus, our whole summer trip not only covers Berlin, we also spent 3 days in London, and the remainders in Bath, Bristol and Manchester.

For me, Berlin is a very interesting place to visit, there's a lot of history to learn and many great photos could be captured. The weather was quite nice. Although it was summer, but it's still cold and windy.

I chose Museum Island for the cover page

Hard Rock Cafe, a must visit attraction for us.. :)

Postcards

Gendarmenmarkt

View from above the tower

World time clock, it displays time for the whole world

One of the significant landmarks in Berlin, Brandenburg Gate.

Berlin Wall used to separate Berlin into two parts

Sehitlik Mosque

Summer Trip Day 5 - Berlin

For today, our plan was very simple and relaxing. First thing in the morning, we went to the metro station and accidentally found a Postbank nearby (post office). So we dropped by there for a while to send off the postcards. Each international postcard cost 75 cent.


After that, we headed to Warschauer Straβe by taking metro. Berlin Wall is located walking distance from this station. A long time ago, Berlin was separated into two parts. East and West Germany had a real bad situation and were separated by these walls. People from the two sides could not communicate with each others or else they would be killed by the rulers. Pathetic and cruel they were. However, nowadays Berlin Wall had become one of the major tourist attractions in Berlin where they were painted and decorated with drawings and paintings. Each wall has different designs and motives. And they are very longgggg... We went inside a souvenir shop to get our passports stamped for €2 (for 4 stamps). My mom bought a Berlin map booklet here.



There was one souvenir coin machine at the wall. It worked by entering 2 cent coin (as the souvenir coin) and €1 for the cost. Then we rotated the handle and the 2 cent coin changed appearance with design of Berlin attraction. It became oval and thinner. Then we walked along the riverside and snapped several shots here. The view was nice...

We had lunch at Bistro Istanbul. As usual they serve kebab and other Turkish dishes. The workers were nice and helpful. We asked them where the nearest mosque is. He explained it very detail and told us which metro should we take to reach there. We also learned that mosque is called camii in Turkish.



After finishing our meal, we headed directly to the mosque. The metro stopped at Boddinstraβe and we walked along Flughafenstraβe for about 20 minutes before we saw the beautiful Turkish design mosque. The name of the mosque is Berlin Turk Sehitlik Camii. There are cafe and souvenir shop in the mosque area. The interior of the mosque is very stunningly beautiful. We performed our prayer here and rest for a bit before continuing our journey.



Next agenda.. Shopping! Since today was our last day at Berlin, we spent our last moment here buying souvenirs and stuffs for ourselves. We stopped at Wittenbergplatz station and headed to the most prestigious shopping mall, KaDeWe. Our eyes were opened widely in shock because most of the things here are indeed prestigious and expensive! But we did bought a bag at Long Champ.




We walked along the Kurfurstendamm street again and saw a Lego shop. So we entered it because it was quite nice and attractive. There is a large Toy Story's Woody figure made from Lego pieces. Aside from that, there is a Brandenburger Tor figure as well. Quite impressive! I bought a couple of Lego Harry Potter fridge magnets. Next, we shopped at yesterday's souvenir shop because the t-shirts sold here were kinda trendy and high quality despite the expensive price.

Before we returned back to our hostel, we saw a postcard maker machine near the metro station. So, we made a postcards with our photo for €3 each but we got discount for purchasing 3 pieces. We grabbed our luggage from the hostel and went to airport to catch our flight to London.

So, that's my story about Berlin. I'll continue writing about other places that I visited soon. I spent 12 days of my summer travelling and this post is my 5th post.. So I got about 7 more posts... Matilaaaaaaa kena tulis banyak2.. But it's okay, because I know there are people waiting to read my next blog post.. Hihihi...

Summer Trip Day 4 - Berlin

As we normally did, we had breakfast in our room with the food we brought from London such as butter croissants, Smarties cookies and muffins. We also bought coffee from the cafe downstairs at €1 per cup.

Our first activity for today was Berlin city tour. Since yesterday we saw several hop-on hop-off buses at Kurfurstendamm, we went there again to try it. It costs €10 for one day and the bus stopped at about 11 stations. The price was very cheap compared to other services so we joined the tour. The bus that we took was from Berliner City Tour company and the bus colour is red and cream. We need to make sure we took the correct bus if we stop at the stations later on.

It was raining heavily today. We did not stop at a few earlier stations to avoid rains. The bus service was good, it has a commentator in English. So every explanation could be heard very clearly. The photos taken along the journey were not so good with the rain drops sticking on the glass windows. The recorded commentator explained briefly about every significant buildings that we passed through, for instance shopping malls, offices, monuments, theatres and embassies.
 


We alighted at Gendanmenmarkt station. Here lies a few fantastic buildings with great design and architectures. German Bundestag is located here, it is a historical exhibition about parliamentary democracy in German. We did not enter the building, but we spent most of our times taking photos around the building and others. Near to the Bundestag there are two other beautiful buildings; one is church and another one I have no idea what it is.


There is an Ampelmann shop nearby. What is Ampelmann?Ampelmann is the symbolic person shown on traffic lights at pedestrian crossings in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR - East Germany).

[source: Wikipedia]

This shop is full with Ampelmann's stuffs such as t-shirts, bags, pens, keyrings, magnets, pins, mugs, postcards and many more. I think Germans must really love Amplemann so much.. We bought somethings from here as souvenirs, not to mention the products were quite pricey.




We took the next bus to continue our tour. The next stop was Alexanderplatz. A lot of attractions could be found here such as Fernsehturm (Tower Centre), Berliner Dome and Museuminsel (Museum Island). As soon as we reached there, the went up the Tower. The entrance fee is €11 per person. The tower is 368 metre high and the observation desk is located at the 203rd metre. There is a rotating restaurant up there as well. The lifts move very fast at 6 metre per second. The panorama observed from above was stunting. We could see the whole city at 360 degree view. Several binoculars were provided and could be used at €1 for several minutes.





After we spent few minutes there, we went down to find a place to have lunch. We found a Fish & Chip restaurant at the Alexanderplatz train station. I was excited because they served a wide variety of seafood here. There are fish burgers, seafood paella, tempura shrimps, fish & chips and others. The dishes were served with lots of veggies. For fish & chip we could choose different type of fish and potato such as boiled potato, fried potato wedges, fries or potato salad. It was heaven!



After lunch, we board the tram to somewhere around the city, just to gain experience. Then we returned back to starting point. We had the chance to take photo at a large rotating world clock. It was amazing. Then, we headed to Berliner Dome which is located just beside the Museuminsel. Museuminsel is consists of a few blocks of museums but we did not enter any of them. Just photographing outside them was more than enough and satisfying.







Our next stop was Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburger Gate). It is one of the must see monuments in Berlin. It was huge and lots of people came here ask for prayer. There is a room specified for people who want to pray in silence, remember back the history of Berlin in the past. In front of the gate, there is a big park called Tiagarten. We didn't explore this park because it was already late and we still need to visit Reichtag nearby. Reichtag is a parliament building and the public could enter this building with security measure. They need to pass through a metal detector and their bags had to be scanned for security. Because of the long queue, we were lazy to enter the building. After taking photos outside, we boarded the bus again back to Kurfurstendamm to meet my parents there and bought more souvenirs. The t-shirts which were quite nice were quite expensive but because tomorrow we were going back to London, we just went for them. It was better to buy them, rather than regret it tomorrow.
We bought kebab at a nearby kiosk before we returned to our hostel. It was not very difficult to find halal shop here because my Turkish lives in Berlin. Every time we walked around the city, we found them accidentally.

Back at our room, I wrote several postcards for myself and friends because I was going to mailed them tomorrow if we found a post office along our journey tomorrow.

[to be continued]