aus Berlin

This is the 100th post of this blog... and I couldn't think of more unique way of writing it than this one.

I am typing this on a german keyboard sitting in an internet cafe in Berlin. I reached here on Saturday and have spent last 2 1/2 days exploring the city. It's a welcome break.

On Sunday I took a 3 hour bus+boat tour of the city and was amazed to find how much there is to see here for a tourist. The most fascinating feeling I had while visiting several places was, this city's history consists of important events from the recent past. Berlin has changed a lot after the fall of Berlin wall in 1989, a significant event in this city's (and cold war's) history. Yesterday I visited the remnats of the notorious Berlin wall and other monuments related to it. Only a part of the wall is left and it is planned to be turned into a Museum. Currently the place holds collections of photos/documents on display from the Nazi regime. I guess the museum will be called 'Topography of terror'. It is near the building where the Gestepo and other Nazi plans took shape.

It is amazing to see how much the city has changed in around 20 years. The Sony center is a symbolic example of this change.

Today morning I visited the German Parliament building - Reichstag. It is freely accessible to public. Most of the buildings in Berlin have two well defined eras - pre WW-2 and post WW-2. As the tourist guide said, about 70% of the city was destroyed in the war. So most of the buildings were either rebuilt from scratch or in part. The glass dome of the Reichstag building is of great architectural significance. That's true about most of the buildings in Berlin. A lot of them were redesigned by inviting tenders from many architects and the winners of the competition were given contract to build the new structures. Thus it is obvious that all of them have been results of lot of architectural design efforts.

The city is very fashionable. I haven't visited more fashion-savvy city than Berlin. The people on street are rarely seen in mundane casual clothes. The streets are full of fashion boutiques or Ads of them. I must be looking odd-one-out ;)

Today's afternoon I spent in Alexanderplatz area (remember "Bourne Supremacy"?) :)

That's it for now. Stay tuned!!!