Beijing One Day, Berlin the Next

The folds of undulating green mountains gave way to the flat expanse of orange that is the Gobi Desert. Towards the Mongol-Russian border green returns in vast swathes of Taiga forests. After many hours the landscape becomes ordered into a patchwork of fields. Europe. Wind turbines, the shimmer of sunlight across a solar array, an autobahn, a city; Berlin. Touchdown.

Europe brought a radical change in scenery. Why was everything so clean and the streets were free of cows and other misplaced farm animals. Berlin is a lovely city, it may lack much of the historic architecture of many other European cities (All these were reduced to piles of rubble by British and American bombing), but i guess that gives the city a more youthful vibe, free to reinvent itself as a modern city.


Berlin is a city of museums. In the first three days I went to eight! From the Gates of Babylon (poached from the middle east and reconstructed here) to the famous bust of Queen Nephrotiti to important works of modern and contemporary art, many of the worlds cultural treasures are housed here. Some of the museum buildings are artworks in their own right, such as the Jewish Museum whose hard, angular geometry of concrete and metal speaks of the pain and brutality of the Holocaust.

The sign over Checkpoint Charlie 

Over the 20th century Berlin has undergone many transformations. From the cosmopolitan cultural capital of the early 20th Century, to the centre of the German Reich's European Empire in the 40s, to it's almost complete annihilation at the end of the WW2. From the ashes rose a city, and a country divided, in time by an infamous wall. The city I visited has only existed since 1989, when the wall came down and east and west were reunified. The wall still has a presence, with sections preserved for posterity, one painted as an outdoor art gallery. The famous Checkpoint Charlie, the crossing between the American Sector and East Berlin, still stands. Yet instead of the barren "death strip" of no mans land it once was, the area is now the bustling centre of the city. It's so hard to imagine when I freely walk across the city what it must have been like to live in such a prison city.

One of my favourite parts of the city was the massive park, Tier Garten. From the dome of the Reichterg ( the German parliamentary building) it looks like a vast forest in the middle of the city. Walking through the grassy glades between the woodland and the city can neither be seen nor heard.

The Memorial to The Murdered Jews of Europe 

The East Side Gallery 

I left Berlin on the slick German rail system for Dresden, beginning my European rail journey. Dresden had a very different feel to Berlin, it's old centre was reconstructed after it was firebombed in WW2. That evening I left for Prague.

Photos for Europe will now be uploaded here: http://photobucket.com/gap2012. Or Just click on the Europe Gallery tab above.