A full day of Berlin or Berlin Down the House!

So this may be a long entry as there was a lot that happened today. But bear with me because there was some interesting crap in here.

First off we did the usual getting up. We'd been told the night before that due to the booking we'd done we'd need to swap rooms this morning so we dragged all our crap three floors down to reception. Only to be told that we could stay in the same room. And so we dragged it all the way back up again. On to the walking tour. From there we saw miscellaneous bits and pieces before the tour guide pointed out the local police. Who, thanks to the idiot making bomb threats, are now walking around carrying mp5's. Oh yeah, we also say a bomb detecting van driving around the streets.Very awesomely, it was solar paneled. Gotta love the Germans.

It is worthy to note that drawing a swastika (even in the fog on a window) is a jailable offence in Germany. It will land you in there for three years. The same is true for the Nazi salute. Something you have to be wary of as a pedestrian when you're used to giving an open palm-raise wave as thanks when a car slows down for you…

Next we learned about the German's infatuation with goldfish and blender related art.

Our tour took us past a few museums where we discussed an exhibit that had recently been shut down. It was of ten goldfish, each in their own blender, each plugged into the wall. The public was then given free reign. You could observe and just watch the goldfish letting it live peacefully or you could press the button and make him into a goldfish smoothie. On the opening night three of the fish suffered this fate. It was them promptly closed down by animal rights groups and there is currently a debate as to who to charge with the crime of animal cruelty. The artist who started the exhibition for putting them in blenders, or the people who physically pushed the buttons.

Next was an exhibit that is waiting to open. The artist is just waiting for one final piece of medium to start the project; the body of a death row inmate from the USA. Apparentlythe artist is going to have the body of a death row inmate mooshed up (blended most likely) into a puree. In the exhibit will be tanks with fish in them. These fish will not be fed by staff or the artist. Instead, anyone who attends the exhibit will be given a little baggie containing some of the inmate. At this point they have to make an ethical decision; do you feed a human being to fish? Or do you let the fish suffer and die? Apparently no matter what choice you make it's the wrong one and hence such an interesting exhibit. Personally I don't see the big deal. The dude's dead and already been blended like a fruit smoothie. If you don't feed him to the fish he's just going to go to waste. Circle of life and all that.

As we moved further on we saw a piece of graffiti on a wall. A number "6" in white paint. Our guide informed us that there's a gentleman who rides around town on his bike all day every day painting these number sixes on stuff all over the place. The reason being, that "six" in German is "sechs" and is pronounced like "sex" in English. He's actually trying to bring back the era of free love by promoting people to think about this. This may or may not work, but at last estimate the government statistics showed that they believed there were more than 75000 of these umber 6's littering the city and he'd been arrested over 500 times for the same thing. But because it's only graffiti he's never gone to jail for it and so he doesn't stop.

Further on we came to some more art. This was in an area where squatters lived and (long story short) they were only paying rent for the entire building of 1 euro a month. They ended up doing some incredibly metal work sculptures including a sweet terminator bear and some other great animals and human sculptures.

Further along the tour we saw other icons like the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie and other things you can read about in history books but I won't go into in much detail here. One interesting thing though is what there is at Checkpoint Charlie. Everything there is fake. Everything. The boom gate is a replica, the massive photos of army personnel are just stock photos of models (the Russian soldier shows his rank as simultaneously being captain, corporal and lieutenant all at once), the border sign is a bad replica plagues with spelling and grammar errors in its translations and the "border guards" are all actors and models. Not just regular ones though. See, you can pay them 1 euro to get a picture of them or a photo done in a pose with them. It's up to you. Apparently they come from a famous agency though. One that does all the casting for strippers and porn actors. So all the "guards" at Checkpoint Charlie are porn stars and strippers… Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention. My favourite part? There's a fast food outlet on the corner called "Snackpoint Charlie". There really is.

So on with the tour. We saw great thing like the hotel window Michael Jackson dangled his baby out of and learned that in a recent survey 57% of Berliners revealed that they wished the wall hadn't come down. Some yearned for a simpler life where they weren't bombarded with advertising, some didn't want the financial burden that came with reuniting the two halves. All I know is that 57% is a lot of people. That's like, almost half.

Next is an interesting invention from the Berliners. Rental bikes. You walk up to these bikes which are literally just scattered around the street, sms a code on the side of the bike to a certain number and they sms you a code back. Using this code you can unlock the bike (it's all electronic with GPS locator inbuilt so the company knows where their bikes are) and you can ride it around. They get your credit card details and when you're done you just leave the bike wherever you want (at the front of your work, outside your house, wherever) and you send them an sms and they lock the bike and stop charging you. Once a week the company uses the GPS to locate all the bikes, picks most of them up and drops them at known busy spots. Apparently this system really works for them. They tried it in Amsterdam though and allegedly it took less than a month for 75% of the bikes to go missing and turn up in Romania…

Walking around Berlin you'll see something really cool. The little green man who tells you it's safe to cross the street? Well him, the little red man and even the handicapped "I'm in a wheelchair, don't park here" guy all have hats. It's bizarre. Later in the day Sarah and I even came across a store that sells merchandise solely related to the red and green man. I was very tempted t buy a green "it's safe to cross the street" light, but my luggage was too full.

So anyway, we then went to a chocolatier where they had massive sculptures made of chocolate. The Titanic, the Brandenburg gate and a few others. They even do a four course dinner (which wasn't available tonight unfortunately) where each meal contains chocolate… A shame or we would have done that.

Instead we went to a beer house though. I ordered a specialty dish for entrée which was described as "cheese and dark bread. Hard to explain, just try it!" At which point I thought "Well, a menu hasn't really lied to me before, may as well trust it". And I was glad I did. I was dark bread with what looked like scrambled eggs in a bowl covered in raw onion. I smeared a bunch of it on the bread and covered it with raw onion and it was freakin' delicious! It was like cream cheese crossed with onion crossed with cheese crossed with mayo and sour cream…. So good… next I got the pig knuckle. It was massive. I actually almost couldn't finish the mean and for a fat b****** like me, that's saying something.It ended up with me feeling very ill and getting the meat sweats from eating about 17kg of the most tender pork ever with sides of sauerkraut, strained peas and mashed potato.

As it was dark we were walking on the sidewalk when the greatest invention ever came past us. The beer bike. This is like a regular bar, except in a long U shape and all the stools have pedals on the bottom. The bartender has a steering wheel and the "patrons" pedal to power the bike while the bartender steers and pours drinks. It was hilarious to see, but everyone on it was having a blast.

This was actually the end of the day though and so there was one last stop to make before going back to hostel. But that requires some brief explanation. See, when Hitler knew he was doomed he found out that Mussolini's body had been desecrated after he'd been found. He'd been dragged through the street naked, hung up by a petrol station and people threw rocks at it, etc. Hitler didn't want a bar of this so after simultaneously shooting himself in the head and biting a cyanide capsule he had his leading men take him down to the street and cover him (and Eva) with petrol and light him on fire so that couldn't happen. When they found his body several days later they removed the lower jaw to verify through dental records that it was him and once they had confirmation they fully incineratedhis body and flushed everything from the neck down into the ocean so no one could get a hold of his remains. Legend has it that his head and lower jaw are kept in a Russian bunker somewhere in a box with the words "ball point pen refills" on it (Soviet humour). So why did I just make you go through a history lesson about what was essentially Hitler's last resting place? Well first off, it's unmarked. The German government has a policy where they don't want it marked so it doesn't glorify it. Kind of a "Don't mention the war" mentality. Second, I decided to show my appreciation for the fuehrer by taking a piss on his final resting place.Take that, you f***er.

So back to the hostel we went, packed up and got ready because we had to catch a plane at 6am the next morning. We packed up, got ready, checked and double checked our routes and public transport timetable and then found out that we've got an extra day in Berlin than we thought. Looks like tomorrow we get to see some stuff we missed out on today.

Which brings you up to speed. Now it's time for me to close the laptop, go to bed and try to post this blog when we get Wi-Fi again.

Until next time…

Fun Fact: There is a place where you can go and pay a small fee to have whatever you want scrolling across a massive board (just above where Hitler did all his speeches). People get messages of love, philosophy, etc going all times of day and night. A few tours before ours though, a British tourist disappeared for a few minutes and then came back giggling and no one knew why. Until they saw he'd paid to have the word "Cockmuncher" scrolling across in giant 20ft tall letters.