Travel Diary: Day 4 in Berlin

For our final day in Berlin we’d planned a bunch of touristy activities because what would be the point of travelling to such a historically rich city and ignoring all the monument?

We started the day at Quichnia for breakfast on a recommendation from my friend Micky. What we didn’t realise was that there was no English menu, and while I’m pretty good with languages (I find I pick up common phrases/conversational skills easily whenever I travel) I sometimes struggle with reading when I’m not familiar with the language – but between us we were able to figure out what most of the items on the menu were, and ordered dishes and drinks we were happy with.

After breakfast the marching began. First we walked over to Checkpoint Charlie, the former military checkpoint next to the Glienicke Bridge the most famous border crossing in Berlin, then onwards to Brandenburg Gate, the only remaining city gate of Berlin formerly used to represent the separation of the city between East and West Berlin, before paying our dues at the Berlin Wall Memorial, situated at the historic site on Bernauer Strasse, the latter of which while incredibly important I did find emotionally distressing. I’ll be honest with you: I cried quite a bit on the last day because I felt so overwhelmed with the historic stories of pain and suffering.

To lighten the mood of our holiday – and because I promised if there was time we’d go – we headed over to Computerspielemuseum, where we got to play all sorts of video and arcade games, I got to watch Jeff do really well at DDR and a stranger tried to convince me to play a game that involved getting ‘tortured’ with electric shocks if I lost a round.

Before we knew it it was time to head back to the airport, and on the way to the metro we found another Photoautomat. We hopped in for a quick picture before realising that the developing time was five minutes, and because we were already a bit late for the train to get us to the airport we considered leaving the photos for someone else to find. But then the machine whirred, the photos came out, I picked them up by the sides so I wouldn’t leave permanent fingerprints while the water from the final wash rinsed away the development chemicals and we ran for the metro.