Germania

Caught the ICE to berlin from Munich took about 4.5 hours, fairly pleasant train Journey. It was fun to do a proper euro train trip, like you see in the movies. Nice having the table inbetween us to chat and eat with.

Once we got to Berlin we very quickly had to check into the hotel and rush to the Euros game. Croatia v Spain which due to my company (Nik being Croatian) i was honour bound to support Croatia, as a dog with no bone in either corner. So i dutifully donned my Croatian jersey and we made our way to olympia stadium which was commissioned in 1936 for which i assume was also used in the famous 1936 olympics pre ww2 with the famous Jesse Owens giving the theortical finger to nazi Germany.

Once we managed to get into the stadium, our seats were in line with the goal post and gave a nice intimate view of the whole field. The stadium by European standards was quite large, with a 70,000 capacity (we had 69,744 attendance), which was very impressive with about 80% croatian attendance. Considering the population of Croatia is under 4mil and spain is 80 odd million, the attendance ratios were impressive. However, Croatia bottled it, losing 3 - 0. Unfortunately, sort of wasted the atmosphere as the only goal scored got rescinded due to a player encroaching the box before the penalty. Croatia played well. They just couldn't shoot to save themselves, and the frustration around the stadium radiated throughout.

The next day, we did a walking tour, which was meant to focus on the history of Berlin / Germany talking about the rise and fall of fascim and neo nazism / communism. What events led to things, etc, but unfortunately ended up being this liberal woman trying to tell us how to think and getting really sidetracked over current day politics like Elon Musk and trump, etc. She barely touched on any of the cool buildings. The tour was meant to go for 3 hrs, but it went for 4.5 and just dragged on. She obviously liked the sound of her own voice and thoughts. So i left no tip for her, lol. She did show us an alternate parties pamphlet of its solution for jews however, this party wanted to ship them to Madagascar (similar to UK taking convicts to Aus), in the pamphlet it rather optimistically states the capacity of Madagascar as 100million (im sure the holocaust victims wouldve much rathered Madagascar to concentration camps though).

Walking through the town, there was a rather odd occurrence. Two seemingly identical churches within eyesight of each other. So i looked up the history and what happened was the french were promised a church for them, supplying the labour about 90% through the build the french learnt that it wasnt for them and instead for the germans. So they abandoned the project and built their own church identical to the other own just down the road for themselves. Once it was done, they then started a rumour that their church was 0.5m taller and thus better. Eventually, in response to this, the germans put up a statue on the roof of their church. The french then put up a statue... with a feather in its hand to be taller than the other church. That's where it's been left today.

Last day here, Nik and i got some bikes, complimentary with the hotel, and went for a cycle west of central berlin towards the tiergarten and Brandenburg gate. The cycle was very nice along the Spree River, going past parliament house and the german presidents residence "bellevue." We managed to accidently come across a military salute and the arrival of the German and Nepalise presidents. We turned back at the Victory Monument built in the 1860s to celebrate victory over the prussians. It provided a good view of the area and had lots of bullet holes.

I didn't really see much of the berlin wall, etc, but overall after Oxford and Utrecht , this would be my favourite city in Europe and definitely my favourite large city I've been to. Although I suspect Berlin was a lot cleaner due to the large police presence of the Euros soccer tournament as any hobos or junkies i saw were quite quickly removed.

Off to krakow Poland for 3 days now to see Auschwitz, the salt mines, and old townLeggi altro