Alone in Berlin

I have just returned from my very first overseas solo endeavour; four/five days in Berlin, Germany. Although I have documented my entire time in a diary, I feel slightly self-conscious in repeating verbatim everything I wrote down, since I did become a little obsessive-compulsive at remembering German street names and U-Bahn stations, and thus some parts are just listing how I travelled from one place to another, and what directions I took. Nonetheless, I fully enjoyed my brief holiday alone. The main downside of travelling on your own is sitting in restaurants. Having to order for one takes a little getting used to, and it is at times like that when you think it would be great to have someone to talk to. Plus, I felt rather paranoid that everyone was either looking at me or wondering why I was dining alone, but that's probably my normal state of paranoia just ramping up a notch. Anyway, my first solo sojourn was excellent fun, only marred by the fact that coming back my plane was delayed by a chemical spillage at Luton Airport, and thus I missed my bus and had to spend a night at a hotel at the airport. Still, Berlin is excellent. I almost always felt safe and comfortable, and it was only around Checkpoint Charlie I didn't like. It felt unfinished and touristy, and it was the only place in the entire city where there were beggars. Still, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum was definitely worth the price of admission, and has to be one of the weirder museums I've visited. If you didn't take the time to read the displays you would think that the museum was a bit of a let down, but the stories on the walls were totally fascinating.

An example I could remember off hand was of a child who fell into the Spree River, but because the river was in East Berlin but the bank was in the West, nobody could dive in to save the child without being shot at by the East German guards, and consequently the child drowned. It opened the door for new legislation which made sure that in such an eventuality again, an emergency button could be pressed to allow a rescue to be attempted. Potsdamer Platz was also a very modern square, with lots of high-flying modern architecture. Hardly any old buildings exist because it was bombed extensively during the war, and then also because the square had existed right in the middle of the course of the Berlin Wall, and so what was once one of the busiest plazas in Europe was reduced to a wasteland. Looking back on the trip though, one of the things that has struck me is that for all I saw and did, there was so much I missed. Although I went to and toured the magnificent Pergamonmuseum (featuring the Pergamon Altar), I didn't go into any other museum on Museum Island. I didn't see any of the preserved sections of the Berlin Wall (apart from a small section in Potsdamer Platz), and I only looked around Alexanderplatz for a few minutes. Just shows how much there will be still to do when I go back.

P.S. Now I've got back I've started reading "Alone in Berlin" by Hans Fallada; a novel I bought on for the title alone. I couldn't resist it.