It’s been 3 days since I last updated you…it just seems to have gone by so quickly. I write now while Chris is packing. As you will know I’m feeling very sad that she is on her way. It will be an adjustment back to my lonesome ways. Anyway the last days have been jam packed and full of nice times.
Back into the deep dark depths of time to Friday. This was great fun as we headed off to a great street market on Maybachufer in the very trendy area of Neukolln. It was a Turkish market and a great place to graze as you walked along. It is beside a canal and again reminded me so much of London. It was so lovely, a very relaxed morning. We then went to that great cafe where I sent the photo of my little face poking out the window. From there we were going to head up to Berlin Wall Memorial but were also going to meet a friend of Chris’ for drinks. Fortunately she rang before (just) we were to get on the train to head off into the wild blue yonder. So we were very easily able to abort that mission and instead went to Oranienburger Tor (Upper Mitte) to meet Sarah in a rather lovely bar. That was very relaxing and very nice. Sarah is a lovely Australian woman living in Berlin and it was great to meet her. After a few glasses of wine Chris and I walked around the area which is very interesting. Its the oldest Jewish settlement and also a very upmarket area full of gorgeous designer shops. But I was busting to go to the loo so was quite persuasive about going home asap. So, being so adept at managing the public transport, we trammed and trained home. For dinner it was back to the yummy cheeses etc we bought at Ka De We which was no hardship!!
Saturday first thing the mission was to get to the Gedenkstatte Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall Memorial) where we were heading the afternoon before when drinks became the imperative. There is no doubt that that was amazing. it really gives you an excellent feel for the impact of the Wall on the life and development of Berlin. We got there on the train and spent a long time underground reading and understanding how the Berlin Wall extended to the underground. With the ‘ghost’ stations and the great lengths the DDR Govt went to to prevent people escaping underground in the train network. All in all we spent hours there both walking along the wall outside, in the museum about the wall and the underground display. From there we went back to our Schwabian restaurant that we liked so much the first time. When we came out of a late lunch it was wet. Not too bad at this point so we walked up the Museum Island. Not to go to a Museum at this point..it definitely would have been all too much. But we walked around all the magnificent buildings, I felt totally overwhelmed at the prospect of so many massive museums to tackle or not to tackle as the case may be. By then however it was pouring, really starting to be very unpleasant so we bought a couple of bottles of wine, went home trudging miserably through the street. Once home we drank the wine and further depleted the fridge.
Now I’m catching up. Today…again Chris had things she was very keen to do so off we went firstly to a Museum that was being renovated and wasn’t open so we detoured to the Gemaldegalerie which is a marvellous gallery full of beautiful masters. So we walked that in a time limited sense given that there was another Gallery Chris wanted to fit in. I loved every minute of my time there. But then off we went to the Bauhaus Archive. A museum of industrial design where artists like Kandinsky and Klee worked. Not my favourite place I have to say but Chris was totally intrigued. So I spent quite a bit of time waiting for her to be satisfied that she’d seen everything she wanted to see!!
Then home which is where we are now. Me watching Chris pack and drinking wine. We have a (rather weird) 10pm booking to go up the Reichstag Dome tonight. The only booking that was available for 2 weeks so we had no choice. But its OK…we’re going to head off soon and go to dinner in the centre then head off to the Reichstag!!
That’s it for me. Tomorrow will be ‘Sad Me’ for a day or so but there is so much more to see and do that I won’t be moping about I can tell you.
