With Work to Berlin - August 2008

I got to spend close to a week in Berlin when I was sent there for a major trading card game event that I helped organize. Still, I managed to find some time to sneak away and do some sightseeing. Our hotel was very close to Checkpoint Charlie, so on day one I went to the museum. The streets outside the museum re-create the scene from the East/West checkpoint (minus the wall of course).


The museum had exhibitions of all the crazy methods people used to escape the Eastern Bloc. One family even built their own hot-air balloon; they weren't specialists in the field of aerodynamics either, just a group of amateurs.
Random Berlin art.
And the purpose of my visit...

Our hotel was in Postdamer Platz, an ultra modern square that looked really cool at night.
Also close to the Brandenburg Gate...

One night I went out with a colleague to explore some of the city's nightlife. We took the metro which actually dropped us off above ground, above a busy intersection. As we walked down the steps we saw that there was a newspaper stand called Akuna Matata with a DJ spinning from it. It was cool but we wandered off to find food and a club. The first club we went to was odd... It was full of 30 somethings so it was older than we expected, and everyone was having an awesome time dancing to really lame music. On top of it, there was a huge mural with David Hasselhof's head... I later found out from a local German that such clubs are typical in Berlin. After about an hour we decided to head back, but when we got to Akuna Matata we saw a full party had started. It was awesome because we were outside, the drinks from the paper stand were cheap, and we were surrounded by cars and had trains going over our heads. We partied on.

I also had a couple of free hours the morning we were leaving Berlin, so I took the metro to see a few more sights, most importantly the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall.

The Fernsehturm Berlin, Berlin's famous TV tower visible from most parts of the city... This kind of reminded me of Toronto.

Unfortunately I had very little time so I just ran around the city the last day, but still managed to see some nice sites. Berlin is a city that really juxtaposes the old with the new, and from what I saw there is a lot to explore.

Since I'm writing this blog a year after this trip, I can tell you about a small-world syndrome. I met a colleague from the US who will turn out to be a long time gaming friend of my future boyfriend. Nerd Herd!