Berlin ist gut!

So after breakfast this morning I decided I would take a long walk around town and explore so new areas and take a closer look at some of the areas I saw yesterday. I started bright and early took a shower and ate the breakfast at the hostel, it’s a good breakfast and it’s all you can eat, but it’s not free like the previous hostels, it’s five euros so I loaded up and made an extra sandwich and stuffed it in my pack for later. I first walked to the Fernsehturm  or Berlin TV Tower. With its height of 368 meters, it is the tallest structure in Germany, constructed between 1965 and 1969 by the administration of the German Democratic Republic. In 1964, Walter Ulbricht, leader of the Socialist Unity Party which governed East Germany, decided to allow the construction of a television tower on Alexanderplatz, modelled on the Fernsehturm Stuttgart and the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik. The tower was actually needed for transmitting radio and TV programs, at the same time it was intended as symboland as a show of the GDR’s strength. Look at us your dirty westerners! It’s a very cool structure nonetheless.

Afterwards I made my way of to museum island again and did some further exploring. As I walking towards the back side of the old museum you cross a walkway lined on both sides of the walk by large columns. It was here I noticed all the pocks, bits, and chunks that were missing out of them. It is my assumption that this was from the war when the allies stormed Berlin and had small firefights with the Nazi forces. The old museum in the front of the island with it’s massive columns and stairways was the backdrop for many of Hitler’s speeches. Germany borrowed a lot of it’s architecture design from Italy, as you seen many Roman style statues and themes in the buildings.

I proceeded to the remaining section of the Berlin Wall, it’s about a block long and it’s surrounded by a park known as the Topography of Terror. It is located on Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, on the site of buildings which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 were the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS, the principal instruments of repression during the Nazi era.The boundary between the American and Soviet zones of occupation in Berlin ran along the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, so the street soon became a fortified boundary.  The wall here was never demolished. Indeed the section adjacent to the Topography of Terror site is the longest extant segment of the outer wall ,the longer East Side Gallery section in Friedrichshain being actually part of the inner wall not visible from West Berlin.

Next I made my way to the park located behind the Reichstag. It’s a sprawling massive park full of trees, flowers, ponds, and the occasional monument. I walked around this park for hours it’s well maintained and to get lost in it’s beauty. I found a nice spot in the shade and relaxed a bit and ate my sandwich I made at breakfast. The park ends a way down with The Victory Column, a massive monument built to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War by the time it was inaugurated on 2 September 1873, Prussia had also defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), giving the statue a new purpose. Different from the original plans, these later victories in the so-called unification wars inspired the addition of the bronze sculpture of Victoria to be placed on the top.

I was getting a worn out by this so I made the long walk back to the hostel and took a hour and half nap and upon waking up I decided it was time to do some laundry. There is a really cool espresso bar slash laundromat. a block from the hostel. Here I met older lady from Maryland who has been living in Berlin for two years on a work VISA. We talked about my travels and her life in Berlin it was a nice way to spend the time. Later on I wander down to the Hackescher Markt and had dinner at small restaurant, I really like how everyone sits outside and dines here in Europe it’s fun watch the people go about to and fro.

So that’s a wrap tomorrow I leave for Prague!!!