Berlin!

Berlin....the largest city in Germany, the city that was rebuilt after the World War II. Quite frankly, my hubs and I were both quite disappointed. No offense, no doubt Berlin is a fairly nice, huge, urbanised city, but somehow with such a big city like this, cosy is not the word to describe it. Nevertheless, it is a city I always wanted to visit..at least once.

We took the first flight out on Saturday, very early morning and arrived in Berlin at 8am so we had a full day. Of course taking such an early flight out meant that we had a very short night. And the next day, we were out and about in the city center, walking and did our sight-seeing which covered approximately 10km! That was our first day and mind you, both of us had only less than 4 hours of sleep the night before. I am quite impressed that we managed to cover most of the highlights in the city center - Fernsehturm (TV tower), Rotes Radshaus (City hall), Alexanderplatz (that's where we stayed), Bradenburg gate (what a sight to behold), Berliner Dom (the Prostestant cathedral), the remains of the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the museums in the Museum Island, Potsdamer Platz :) :) In between, we had our pitstop to rest our poor tired feet and of course to have nice German desserts that they are good at making. We crashed out nicely that night, very early Zzzzzzz.

The next day we took it easy and decided to visit the Schloss Charlottenburg palace and the must-visit Pergamon museum that was highly recommended by my parents-in-law. The palace was quite a disappointment but perhaps we have seen much more beautiful palaces in other countries such as France. We had to take the public transport to the palace as it is situated outside the city center. We were quite impressed by the German public transportation, it is pretty good. Everywhere, there will be frequent buses, trams, fast tram, trains, etc. Initially, it was quite confusing for us as there were so many type of public transportation available but once you get used to it, it's pretty easy.

Whereas the Pergamon museum took our breath away. The museum is world famous for its archaeological holdings. The Pergamon, located on Museum Island, is really three museums in one – the Collection of Classical Antiquities (also on display in the Old Museum), the Museum of the Ancient Near East, and the Museum of Islamic Art. The Pergamon Museum’s monumental highlights are truly breathtaking to behold. This museum will be my second most favourite museum after the Egyptian Museum in Cairo ;)

Since we had some time left before dinner time, we decided to check out the Reichstag building, the German parliament building. The building is an iconic glass dome constructed on top of the rebuilt Reichstag. It was designed by architect Norman Foster and built to symbolize the reunification of Germany. The distinctive appearance of the dome has made it a prominent landmark in Berlin. Many tourist flocked to this building to catch a glimpse of this German parliament building. We had to queue for 30 mins before we get into the building with tight security of course. When we got into the dome, it was worth it. The view from the dome was magnificent and the dome itself was amazing. The Bundestag dome is the iconic large glass dome at the very top of the building.The dome has a 360-degree view of the surrounding Berlin cityscape. The main hall of the parliament below can also be seen from the cupola, and natural light from above radiates down to the parliament floor. A large sun shield tracks the movement of the sun electronically and blocks direct sunlight which might bedazzle those below.

The last day, we had a full day as our flight back was at night, we decided to hit the shopping area, the famous KaDeWe ("Kaufhaus des Westens") shopping mall, 60,000 sq. metres of flagship store packed with designer labels! More like window shopping there...drooling all over the nice clothing on display :) Believe it or not, Berlin also has a Galleries Lafayette! But unfortunately not as nice and big as the one in Paris of course, and no shoes department :( How disappointing.

We didn't waste our last day shopping alone, we went to visit the famous Berlin Zoo after spending 2 hours browsing around the stores and had a quick, delicious lunch in KaDeWe. Lunch was very good in their chic food court right on the top floor of the stor one of the best zoo around and has the most species of animals in the world which we agreed. Probably being one of the older zoo around, some of the 'habitats' for the animals were sorely lacking (small area of confinement) as compared to the zoos in Holland. Perhaps too many animals cramped into one big area. We hope that with some works going around now, the management are going to enlarge the zoo area further.

Last but not least, the German food.....I was quite disappointed the first 2 days and most likely we had picked some wrong restaurants/cafes cos the food was sorely lacking than what we had expected. We were compensated on the last day when we discovered this nice cafe, a stone throw away from our hotel. It was soooo good and of course with the lunch that we had in KaDeWe, it sure make our day in Berlin ;) ;)