Berlin is burning, part 1

I've promised to blog about my Berlin trip for ages now but going through over 300 photographs is not that easy, especially when you want to pick up the ones that best describe this amazing city. I've tried to collect here some of my favorite places to visit, hopefully you will find them useful and interesting.

My absolute favorite area was the rough East side: the art galleries, beautiful yet decadent buildings, street art and all the amazing boutiques made me instantly fall in love with Berlin. It's no wonder that only a few days after our trip, I found myself booking flights to go over there for the New Year celebration.

The last time I was in Berlin was almost 15 years ago, and a lot has changed since. I have always been interested in the history of Berlin and we were lucky because we happened to arrive there during a very historical weekend; thousands of Berliners were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the "Mauerfall", the fall of the wall that once separated the East and West. There were lots of open air expos with street art and pictures, and even though I'm not German, it was a very emotional experience being in the middle of it all.

Naturally, visiting tourist attractions was part of our agenda. I highly recommend the Bauhaus museum where you can see the famous German architecture and design work, Checkpoint Charlie where East meets West, the grey and massive Alexanderplatz, and the East Side Gallery featuring art on the Berlin wall. I also heard that the DDR museum is pretty interesting, though we didn't have the time to visit it last time but will definitely check it out next time.

The fastest and the cheapest way to move around the city is to take the metro (U-bahn). Berlin is one of the safest cities in central Europe, so moving around day or night time was never a dubious. Taxis were also fairly cheap and are probably the best way to get to the airport if you are carrying heavy luggage.

More about Berlin in the next post, stay tuned!