BERLIN SPECIAL

ABLE2's Rough guide to...BERLIN.

Published: 16th November 2009

There's 3.4 million people there, it's German second largest city, used to have a bloody big wall around it and has a famous gate which has something to do with the War.

Don't you wish all tours were that quick? Learning about a city can be pretty dull at the best of times. So what we thought we would do is to give you a quick tour around the capital of Germany which hopefully won't send you asleep. OK, let's give it a shot...

First things first, if you aren't pleased with our guide you can always catch a flight to Berlin itself and bore yourself stupid at Kurfurstendamm 220 / Meinekestraesse - A museum all about the city and 'probably' the equivalent to our own London History museum. Nearby you can loose your girlfriend/wife/four year old sister in the Europa Center where they can visit a total of ninety nine shops, cafes and other boring outlets. You can shrug off your father/Granddad/worst mate inside the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church. Inside is a memorial to all the German soldiers who lost their lives in the war. We read most of the stuff inside - Wearing our Red Poppy with pride!

More women delights can be found at KaDeWe. Covering 60,000 square metres this huge department store attracts around 40,000 visitors a day. For the artistic types among you (i.e. those who failed at English & Maths so decided to attend Art school) pop along to Lützowplatz. This permanent exhibition features the work of Walter Gropius, the bloke who found the Bauhaus movement.

If you crave more arty farty stuff you can mince your way over to Kulturforum. Here you will probably have a wet dream because such tantalizing delights such as The Art Gallery & The New National Gallery are situated around this area.

Bit of history for you next, back in 1824 Karl Friedrich Schinkel built something called The Potsdamer Platz, in the 1920's this became a very important traffic junction and a popular meeting place. Today you can visit the Sony Centre, an indoor complex with restaurants and an Imax cinema which has seen many a famous footprints left by A List celebrities attending film premieres such as Spiderman and very recently, 2012. Over the street you can catch famous Broadway and West End shows such as The Blue Man Group and The Lion King. Keeping up with the technology world the streets even have information points with touch screen services which allows passer bys to surf the web and find places of interest for free, one of which being The Jewish Museum, built by Daniel Libeskind the building stands out because of its pretty architecture.

Twenty years ago The Berlin Wall (The background of the borders for our Berlin articles - in case you were wondering!) was knocked down, but what exactly was this pile of bricks in the first place? Well, apart from giving Bono something to talk about the Wall was built in 1961 to enclose the West of Berlin and separating it from East Berlin. Guarded by German solders the estimated five thousand people who tried to climb the wall to gain freedom faced a very tough challenge and up to two hundred of them were killed for their attempted escapes. America and Britain both had sectors of Berlin, for these two counterparts to be reached safely a crossing point referred to Checkpoint Charlie. Referred to as Checkpoint C the crossing became a gateway to freedom for a percentage of East Germans.

Squares are commonly found in cities aren't they? London has Trafalgar, Rome has St. Peters, New York has Times and even Germany has one called Gendarmenmarkt. Instead of having a statue of Nelson the best the Germans could come up with is a concrete slap in the shape of Friedrich Schiller; A famous German poet. Elsewhere around this area you can visit French & German Cathedrals.

Back in 1805 Czar Alexander I paid a visit to king Friedrich Wilhelm III to sign a treaty against Napoleon. To mark this historic journey another square became a historic landscape in Berlin. The Alexanderplatz now boasts a tall television tower which was built in the 1960's and if you have a few hundred Euros floating around you can travel up to the top and have a panoramic view of Berlin.

The Berlin Cathedral and the Sea Life Centre are fairly close together and we don't think you need us to waste a paragraph describing what both attractions are about. Do you? For more animals pay a visit to Berlin Zoo to see really pissed off lions and tigers in confined cages and poke your fingers at the 'world famous' Polar Bear. The German tourist guides go on about how popular this furry white creature has been. The news coverage must have escaped us! What the guides do tend to keep quite about though is that back in April a woman was pushed into the Polar bear's compound and was nearly mauled to death. The bears name? Knut - We presume the middle letters are the correct way round!

Today the Friedrichstraße, we have no idea how to pronounce it and even more baffled by that weird B symbol towards the end of the word. Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, Friedrichstraße comes across as your typical stylish shopping centre, but back in the days it was here which saw the historic grounds of The Tränenpalast, also known as The Place Of Tears this used to be the crossing point to the 17th of June 1953c.

Remember we mentioned Friedrich Wilhelm II? It was him who requested that the Brandenburg Gate to be built. Taking three years to build (1788 - 1791) the monument is the only remaining entry gate to the city. Nearby you can take a wander to The Reichstag which is the only seat of the German Parliament.

If you prefer train rides opposed to the tram lines or taxis you may end up at Hauptbahnhof/Lehrter Bahnhof. Even though its name resembles a character Tolkien may have dreamt up it is in fact the new main railway station and looks bloody impressive from the outside.

Relax guys, we have almost covered the city and our final stop sees us at Straße des 17. Juni, or 'The 17th Street of June'. Starting off at Ernst-Reuter-Platz in Charlottenburg and crossing the Charlottenburg Bridge to Tiergarten and leads to the Brandenburg Gate. Named after the uprising which took place on 17th of June 1953 in East Berlin and other towns in the German Dominican Republic the street will also take you into Tiergarten Park.

Right, that's our History lesson over with. If you still need more information on Berlin another museum can be found at Charlottenburg Palace, which used to be the home of the Hohenzollern family. Failing that take trips into the town centres and experience the hustle and bustle of Berlins electrifying night life.

Related Links on ABLE2

EMA's 2009

EMA's After Show Party

Richard Godfrey Interview

Concentration Camp