Ich Bin Berliner

Me and the wife went to Berlin a couple of weeks ago to see our son. We made it out of Newcastle an hour before the The Thunder Thursday floods brought the whole of the city’s roads to a grinding, gridlocked halt.

We flew from Manchester Airport which I would recommend to anyone in the North. Easily accessible, good parking and easy to navigate around.

I haven’t been to Germany before and Berlin for me and the wife was a bit of surprise.I’m not going to judge the whole country (or even Berlin) from a few days tourism. Like London my guess is Berlin is too big and too untypical of the rest of the country.

First impressions were that Berlin is a very “young” city. At times I felt my age as nobody else (apart from the loonies and drunks on the U Bahn) seemed to be over 30. And this was my impression from doing just the touristy stuff. We didn’t go clubbing. Secondly although admittedly the city was very clean- no litter-we were both taken back by the amount of graffitti all over the trains, bridges and buildings in the suburbs. Including that all over my son’s apartment block building in Kreuzberg. We weren’t expecting that. Though yes the trains were on time and clean.

Thirdly I was struck ( and this is amazing bearing in mind we live in Newcastle) how white the city’s population is. The small BME population seems to be Turkish or the occasional North African.

I was also struck by the history of the city. A history that goes back beyond the two Wars. The architecture and styling of the city’s monuments felt very Victorian and the neo classical styling was very familiar to us. In fact we felt very comfortable in Berlin. It all felt very familiar and although German was being spoken that was almost a surprise to us.

Then of course there is the modern history of the The Wall. Our hotel was on Fredrichstrasse a couple of hundred metres away from Checkpoint Charlie. There is a museum dedicated to this famous checkpoint and a replica hut and sign ( You are now entering The American Sector…) in the middle of the street.

The Wall ( or fragments of it) are all over the place. This is real history and so far I don’t think the City or the Country have yet come to terms with it or the impact of reunification of the city and country when the Wall came down almost 22 years ago. It’s still too real, too close too many memories. I expect that in another 22 years Berlin will have dealt with this episode in its life and come to terms with it. To think that in a Europe less than 25 years ago people were being shot and killed for trying to cross a street I was walking on seems incredible. It felt weird and I can’t imagine how that feels in places like Sarajevo where war is even closer to us in time.

We did all the touristy stuff, stood at Brandenburg Gate, went up to the Norman Foster Dome on the Reichstag ( book this in advance on their website), went out to the Olympic Stadium stood in Alexander Platz, looked in Operplatz where the Nazi book burning happened. Our son was a good tour guide and took us to places off the beaten track using the knowledge he has gained from living and studying there since the end of March.

We watched the Euro 2012 final in the Fan Park by the Brandenburg Gate. We had been hoping that the Germans would have got to the final but they let us down. The atmosphere was therefore a bit subdued but there were enough Italian and Spanish fans about to make a good atmosphere despite the thunderstorm at half time which sent us scurrying back to our hotel.

All in all we really enjoyed Berlin and may even go back to Germany again.

We stayed at Hotel Angleterre on an Easy Jet holiday package . Return flights and three nights B&B for £460.

Not bad I think. We could have done it cheaper but the hotel was easily accessible to the centre of Berlin and only three stops from where our son is living so it worked out well for us all.