Day 91 - Berlin

Today is my first full day off!! I had a nice long lie and left the hotel on a little adventure of my own at 12noon.

I walked right along a huge section of the Berlin wall to start with which is where todays blip is taken from. It was the section which hit me when I suddenly realised what I was looking at was not a big long wall of amazing graffiti art.

I was born in 1989 so I suppose it just makes me realise that how not so long ago this was all taking place!

I walked from Warscheauer Strasse along the wall which led me all the way along the riverbank ending up at Alexander Platz. I took hundreds of photos on my way.

I found myself standing outside Berliner Dom which is such a magnificent building. I performed inside this in 2006 with Edinburgh Youth Orchestra featuring Nicola Benedetti and Garry Walker. I couldn't really believe looking at the outside of this building that I knew exactly what it was like to be on the inside and what it sounded like. An experience I will never forget.

I kept on walking past the Museum right the way along to Brandenburg Gates. Which I also remember travelling too back in 2006. I decided to keep walking a little further to the Holocaust memorial where I felt slightly strange considering I had a poppy in my bag as it has just been remembrance Sunday... Not quite the same in Germany.

I came across another little memorial statue which I thought was just brilliant across the road from this which was the monument to homosexuals killed by Nazis... I might take a trip to the "gay" museum tomorrow, just because I can and it is something I would love to know more about. Inside the monument was a video playing on loop of gay couples kissing.

I headed from here down to Potsdamer Platz before making a pretty awful job of getting the U-Bahn and S-Bahn trains home eventually by 5.30pm!! A brilliant day out! My camera battery was dead by the time I got to my final stop but I saw a huge amount of Berlin and walked about 6km!! (I think I will pay for that tomorrow!!!)

Had a relaxing evening going in and out of the swimming pool/sauna.

"The Berlin Wall

Oh, hideous scar 'cross urban face,
Crowned with barbed wire, glass and fate,
So roughly hewn and out of place.
No welcome mat. No exit gate.

Erected there, concrete and glass,
To keep the desperate many in.
Erected so no one would pass
From the East to West Berlin.

Oh, so many dared to try
To answer Freedom's call,
Only there to bleed and die
On that cursed, horrid wall.

An American leader at the Gate
Issued strong a clarion call
For a different human fate,
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Before too long the wall came down,
Imprisoned people finally free.
Now we hear the joyous sound
Of a united Germany.

Let us each vow today
To never let a future wall
Ever get in Freedom's way
Or try to silence Freedom's call."
Anon