Sausages and Lederhosen

BERLIN!

We had the chance to go to Berlin with the architecture firm Eric works for here. As their Christmas bonus CamillinDenny plans a trip every year somewhere in Europe. This year it happened to be Berlin. I was lucky enough to tag along as the "partner". So, we packed our little green bags and headed for the airport. The taxi picked us up and we headed to Gatwick airport to early for any human being to be up on a Saturday.

We had free time until 6:30pm so we wandered around the city a bit. We were hungry so we headed in the direction the hotel's front desk staff said to go. It turned out to be the mall. Bummer. But, it turned out to be in a cool location - Potsdamer Platz.

(This is near Potsdamer. There were a bunch of teeter-totter-like displays in a plaza)

Potsdamer Platz master plan was designed by Renzo Piano Workshop. Richard Rogers Partners designed three of the buildings for Daimler Chrysler within the Platz. The buildings comprise of offices, apartments and retail.

Within the Platz we discovered a Christmas Market!!! We pretty much ate all of our meals here. They had crepes, sausages, gingerbread, stolen, chocolate, candy, and lots of beer.

We were starving. It doesn't look it, but this was probably one of the best sausages I've ever had.

Berlin really does have a lot of great architecture. Every corner there is a great building. This is on the way to the Reichslag.

This is the Reichstag. It houses parliament and was renovated by Norman Foster. The original bit (that you can see below) was constructed between 1884 and 1894 by Paul Wallot. We had to wait in that line you see. It was a LONG line. We waited for about 2 hours in the cold - freezing, not moving. I felt like I was in line for my weekly rations and food stamps.

This is in a huge block of the city. The Reichstag overlooks the Platz der Republik, which is where the Victory Column stood until 1938 and where the celebration of German unity took place on October 3, 1990.

They had some entertainment for us. These people were weird. They didn't make any noise and they moved this guy around the area. But I got to high-five him.

Here we are. Waiting. See me? I'm in the green coat.

We finally made it. There was no photography allowed in the entrance (government for you) and we had to go through metal detectors and screenings before getting to this part.

This place was really cool. It's the ecosystem of the building. The most significant element is the "light sculptor". Daylight reflects without glare through the cupola by the 360 angled mirrors attached to the cone so less electricity is required for artificial lighting. It also allows waste air to heat the building.

We were given an audio tour and learned about the surrounding buildings and history. You can see quite a bit of Berlin from the top.

After touring this we decided to head back and get ready for the dinner. It was at Am Gendarmenmarkt Brasserie in the middle of historic Berlin. The dinner took hours but it was really good. We had Oxtail soup, fillet of beet w/ veggies (drenched in a really good gravy) and a parfait with a marzipan date. No one ate the date (except me - I like dates) Here is our little table.