First Day in Berlin

So, today was my first full day in Berlin. After some problems setting up the internet yesterday, Gunter was able to figure it out, and now I'm back. Yesterday, I went to the After Essen Gaming Party at the SpielWeise in Berlin. This gaming session is hosted by Jeff Allers and it is held in a small but awesome gaming cafe. The place has a great gaming collection, serves food, rents games, and creates a generally nice atmosphere. Now, why don't we have something like that in Harrisburg?


But, I am getting ahead of myself. I arrived in Berlin earlier in the day at the main station. This place is huge, and it looks awesome. Outside of the entrance, they have this stairway to nowhere that you can climb up and look out over the city and back at the station.


Today, I wanted to start out with the Free Berlin Tour. I showed up at the tour early and was able to walk around the area some. My first stop was the zoo.


Then I visited the Kaiser Wilhem Gedachtnis Kirche. Ack. The church is awesome though. It was damaged during the war, and instead of repairing it, the Berliners left it that way as a monument to the war.


I also visited the Europa center. This large shopping center had, among other things, this nifty clock that is filled with a green liquid that fills different baubles to tell the time.


So, I went on the free tour, and saw the Brandenburg Gates, the area that now cover's the bunker where Hitler shot himself, a number of churches, an opera house, and the coolest thing of them all, the Berliner Dom. I had to pay 3 Euros to get in, but you were able to climb to the top and look out!!!!! The view was magnificent.


And here is the view from the Dom.

After that, it was getting dark, but I headed over to the TV Tower, a landmark of Soviet Germany. The guide told us a cool story about the tower. Of course, the communists were against any signs of religion, so they went around Berlin and removed all of the crosses. And they built this awesome tower as a symbol of soviet awesomness. Well, first of all, they were not able to do it with soviet engineers and needed to bring in (secretly) Swedish architects. But, it seems that when the sun shines on the top of the tower, the reflection resembles a cross! Keep in mind that this is one of the tallest structures in the world, and you now have one huge cross. I like the following pictures because it is a nice juxtaposition (big word, eh?) between modern and ancient, religion and atheism.

Of course, there are so many more pictures, and I simply do not have the patience to upload them all. So I will end with this.


What is this? Well, it is even more proof that Germand DO celebrate Halloween! Score another one for the good guys! Mom, you are so wrong!