'ich bin ein Berliner'...

JFK said this in his famous 1963 speech, just after the wall went up, in support of West Berlin - and the US (jokingly?) translated it as 'I am a donut'. (silly Americans).

As you might have guessed - I went to Berlin on the weekend!! Anna, Mike and I got up long before the crack of dawn (sunrise is almost 8am these days), took a train to Gatwick, and flew out by 8.30am. Mike joked that Anna was the only person in London to get through airport security with 3 bags (the limit is 1!) - that she was carrying 2 under her eyes!

Someone at the back of the plane had the misfortune to become ill during the flight, so the pilot hot-footed it and we shaved half an hour off a 1.5 hour flight, an ambulance waiting on the tarmac.

I found Berlin to be bleak and modern, but also extremely festive. They had little wooden huts lining the streets as temporary christmas markets. The first thing we did was find lunch, which happened to be half a meter of bratwurst in a bun - seriously! Followed by a taste of garlic mushrooms, a donut to share - and a glass of hot gluwein (mulled wine).

That night we headed down Kurfurstendamm, which is a major shopping street, and it was lit up with millions of beautiful fairy lights. We went back to the markets for dinner where I ate hirtenbrot, which is a thick semi-circle of bread, filled with meat and gravy. De-licious!

Sunday we took a free walking tour, and visited heaps of sights - the Brandenburger gates, Checkpoint Charlie, saw the remaining 100m of the Berlin wall, and stood above Hitlers bunker. We also walked through an amazing memorial to the 6,000,000 Jewish people that were killed. Goosebumps...

We had monday there as well, so Anna went shopping and Mike and I took a tourist bus around the city. It took us 7 hours to get home, door to door, which is alot of mucking about for a weekend away. We even had to run for the last tube as it was pulling into the station. Thankfully I had tuesday off to recover.