Arrival in Berlin

I arrived yesterday in Berlin at right about noon. After landing at the airport, I headed to the Ostbahnhof (East train station) because I knew there would be lockers there. I had agreed to meet my hostess between 7:30 and 8:30 at night, so I had some time to kill and I didn't want to carry around my luggage all day.

Because I had so much stuff I decided it would be easiest to take a cab rather than navigate public transit. This turned out to be a very good decision as my cabbie was the best ever. The drive from Airport Tegel to the Ostbahnhof took us directly across town, so he drove slowly through the town center and pointed out the different parts of town as we went. We even went right up to and turned in front of the Brandenburg Gate, while he was all the while pointing out the old line of the Berlin Wall and whose Embassies were where and all security measures that have been set up around the American and British Embassies since the Iraq war started. When we were getting close to the Ostbahnhof he described the neighborhoods on either side of the river Spree (say shpray), which in that part of town used to be the border between East and West Berlin. Kreuzberg is on the west side and has a very young and very international population. Friedrichshain is on the east side and is very nearly pure German. That two neighborhoods so close could have so different makeups shows you the kind of effect that the different governments of East and West Berlin had. (By the way - the place where I am living is in Kreuzberg about two blocks from the river.)

When he dropped me off at the Ostbahnhof he pointed out one end of the famous "East Side Gallery", a stretch of the Berlin Wall that was painted with various modern and abstract depictions of the former state and the people's dream of freedom. After I stowed my stuff in a locker I walked up and down the entire East Side Gallery. I would guess that it's more than a kilometer long, and there's painting on both sides. It was a pretty awesome look into the history and heart of Berlin. Click here to see the pictures I took.

Add up an awesome tour, great tips for how to spend my afternoon, and a reasonable price, and I think this taxi driver deserves an award or something. And I even forgot to tell you how he said, "You really need a good city map if you're going to be a month in Berlin" and then fished around in his glove box and handed me one. It was definitely a great way to be welcomed into the city.