Berlin - Day 4
We've got a big last full day planned so we're aiming to be at the DDR Museum when it opens at 9am. Naturally, we sleep in til 8:45am. Ah well. We have a quick brekky in the room and hit the road, the museum is only a short walk from the hotel. We buy a ticket and enter the museum and as the reviews said, it's stiflingly warm inside. For some reason they have decided that everything needs to be lit up with what feels like a bloody heat lamp. There is lots of cool stuff to see at least. It's all about life during the DDR with stacks of info about that period, along with recreations of rooms and a Trabant car that you can sit inside and drive in a computerised sort of set up. Fun.
We find it crazy to think this was all happening during our life-times (just). Like, the DDR were competing in (and sometimes winning thanks to some blatant doping) Olympic Games up until 1988!
Next we head to the underground to get a train to visit a park that used to be an airport. We hop off the train and stop for a Berliner bun (when in Berlin). It has Cherry jam inside, which is nice for something different. The bun is a bit dry but it's gets 3/5 🌟 because the jam is good. We notice there is a massive bike ride going on through the city. Families, young, old, everyone is involved. Some riders are carting along cases of beer for hydration. We've noticed they don't mind a beer around here, lots of low key drinking on the street.
We get to a park we need to walk through to get to the airport park. It seems a bit seedy with what appear to be non-discreet drug dealers on every corner. We aren't too worried because we pass by some old ladies who are hiking around and we can still see plenty of "normal" people around. Reddit later confirms they are in fact drug dealers.
We push on until we get to Tempelhofer Field, formerly the Tempelhof airport which was used during World War II, played a key role in air drops during Cold War blockades, and was a commercial airport until 2008 when they shut it down and opened it up to be a public park as part of a giant urban rejuvenation project. It's sparse and there is so much open space as you'd expect being an airport. People are running, bike riding, roller blading and even playing cricket on the runways. We get a bit of a kick out of walking along the runway. It helps you to understand just how big an airport really is. It's not pretty by any stretch of the imagination but it's unique and the Berliners seem to be loving it.
We've had or fill of airport parks and sun, so it's time for a another kebab near the train station. So good. The surrounding suburbs are not that pretty and we've noticed that most of the public parks don't look that inviting. We hop on the train back to downtown as we've got a free tour lined up at the Topography of Terror, an outdoor and indoor history museum in Berlin. The tour guide knows his stuff and it's very informative but we leave feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the information we've taken in thus far and realising how much there is that we don't know. There are just so many rabbit holes you could fall into with this stuff.
We need a break from the past and decide to walk to the casino for a chip for the collection. It is one of the bigger and nicer ones we've seen in Europe and the cheapest, with a couple of free drinks included in the entry. Unfortunately, the beer is the one that caused our demise 2 nights ago. Steer clear of the Berlin Pilsner, people. Jeff plays enough Black Jack to get a chip but it's too hectic at the table so we don't stick around long.
Last place on our list to visit is Tiergarten. We skirted the edges on our walking tour the other day but we are keen to walk through it, noting it takes 45 minutes to get from our side to the other. We've also earmarked an authentic German restaurant for our last dinner in Berlin, also on the other side of the park.
We set off and it's a lovely park. We see ducks, a squirrel and a rabbit. it's very green and lush and used to be a hunting park. It is a far cry from the airport park from earlier today in terms of aesthetic, although we do have our eyes peeled for anything dodgey.
We get to the restaurant, a Biergarten, where we have beers of course, a burger and Vienna schnitzel. Today was jam packed, we hop on the train and head back to the hotel.
