Berlin in 48 hours

We arrived at Berlin main train station just after 1 PM and I was surprised how huge the glass structure seemed to be. You can check out my Frankfurt to Berlin post here . We came to the hotel at about 3 PM . The location of our hotel was great – located in the Mitte area, only few blocks away from the Alexander Platz  and right next to a U-bahn station (the subway) so only  few subway stops away from all the main tourist attractions.  

Berlin is a big city and it is of course great to walk around the entire city looking at famous monuments, museums, gardens, etc. But eventually you’ll get worn out from all the walking and then you need a good and fast way to get around. It seems like the public transportation is quite excellent in Berlin. The U-Bahn covers most of the city with frequent stops around town.

We were in Berlin just for the weekend, so the typical touristy stuff  we covered are the main historical sights in Mitte (the old centre of town in former East Berlin covering the area between Brandenburg Gate and Alexanderplatz ),  Brandenburg Gate, the street of Unter den Linden, the Reichstag, Berlin Wall, Holocaust Memorial, Museum Island, Checkpoint Charlie and enough time to walk around the Potsdamer Platz, Tiergarten and former West Berlin.

We took a walk along Unter den Linden towards the Brandenburg gate (Brandenburger Tor). Brandenburg gate is one most recognized places of Germany, hence lots of tourist here. Still an impressive site. 

Alexanderplatz is not a particularly nice area of Berlin, has a  large shopping area. Kind of grim, concretey and unattractive. The TV tower- Fernsehturm is imposing.

Reichstag, or the German parliament is an impressive building with beautiful views. We couldn't go up the wonderful glass dome, apparently you have to book in advance to go up in the dome. The line outside was close to the longest line that I have ever seen. So we settled for the view of the building 

Checkpoint Charlie is located on Friedrichstrasse which is full of shops,cafes and restaurants with lot of people and nice atmosphere.  At Checkpoint Charlie today you can find a replica of the sign and watch booth that was once there but there is not that much else to remind you of the history that the place holds. It  is very tourist centered with funny costumed "soldiers" to take pictures with, but this is it. 

Museum Island is a small island that contains the Berliner Dom, Pergamonmuseum  and a few other museums and hence the name museuminsel (museum island). The Berliner Dom church was partially destroyed during World War 2 but it has been restored in a "simplified" form. The church looked really impressive on the outside, but we decided not to  check out the inside

The Paragmonmuseum is not as extensive as museums like Louvre and the Vatican museum, so I wasn't expecting to spend too many hours inside, however the entrance had a long line, something like 45-60 minutes to get in, so decided to skip it.

Berliner Dom

Potsdamer Platz

Berlin is a huge city and well worth a visit. Lots of great restaurants to check out and lots of attractions to visit. We were not able to cover all the places that we wanted to. So the next time I go there I would like more time so I can visit some of the places that I missed.

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Frankfurt to Berlin on ICE, the german high speed train

I was in Frankfurt last month to attend a conference, since my wife had also tagged along with me, we decided to spend the weekend in Berlin. There were couple of things I was looking forward to my journey to Berlin;

1. Ride on the ICE train.
2. The new Berlin Hauptbahnof.

DB's Inter City Express or "ICE " high speed trains are among the best-known brands of Germany, that said, I decided to take the train to Berlin instead of flying. My only other experience on a high speed train was on Thallys from Paris to Brussels. We booked the tickets online two weeks in advance and were lucky enough to get the reduced price fare. I was hoping that I could get on the third generation ICE3 train which supposedly goes over a speed of 300km/hr (It takes less than an hour to travel a distance of 140miles from frankfurt to Cologne on ICE3) , but it turned out that Frankfurt-Berlin was operated by ICE2 trains which is slightly slower than ICE3, but ofcourse still way faster than the Amtraks we are used to.

We arrived at the Frankfurt Haupbahnof 30 mins before our scheduled departure. Since we had already reserved our seats, we knew which car to board and finding our seats was very painless. They even had our names printed above our seats. The train itself was very nice compared to Thallys. The seats were large with lots of legroom and looked like the business class seats of a transatlantic flight. The coolest part was the electronic tableau over the sliding glass doors which shows the actual speed of the train. When I looked at it on the way to the restroom it was showing 240 km/h. That’s probably the fastest speed I’ve ever traveled at, without leaving the ground.

The German country side had some breathtaking views. The train makes few stops on the way to Berlin including Wolfsburg. For all the VW fans outhere, the Wolfsburg station is right next to the Volkswagon factory and you can pretty much see the the entire factory, customer delivery center & VW museum buildings from the train.

It took slightly less than 4 hours to reach Berlin, we got off at the new spanking Berlin central station or the Hauptbahnhof. The entire building is made of glass, its huge and amazing to look at, it looked so delicate that I felt that the entire building could come crashing down if the glass shatters. If you ever get off at Berlin Hauptbanhof walk towards the center of the building and you could see trains moving in all three levels.It's a remarkable piece of design and engineering. It's also one of the biggest shopping centers in Berlin and pretty cool out there.

ICE Train

One of the three levels 

Main Entrance

In my opinion ICE trains are definitely much better than Thallys and I believe Thallys and French TGV operate similiar trains. Hopefully I can take the eurostar later this year and decide for myself which is the best train in Europe. My only advice if your are planning on taking ICE is to reserve your seats in advance.

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