It was our final day in Berlin and the last place we would stay for more than a couple of days before we got home. When I woke at about 8am, it was grey, raining and miserable outside and as our overnight train to Paris wasn’t due to depart until 8pm, we decided to take it slow on our last morning in our apartment. Except that I went to do our last lot of washing so we would have enough essentials to make it home – there are just some things you can’t wear twice. So off I traipsed – Lowes spray jacket almost iridescent blue (against the greys and blacks that everyone seems to wear in Europe in winter).  I cut a lonely figure wandering down the rain soaked street in the pre-dawn light to the laundromat where I found a few other lost souls also completing their domestic chores. Washing done, I headed back to the apartment to help Dan cleanup. We packed up, deposited the keys, took the Christmas tree down to the dumpster and headed to the Hauptbahnhof to deposit our bags and head out for one last day in Berlin.

As the shops were still shut and quite a few of the attractions, we decided today was a good day to look at open air museums. Thankfully Berlin has quite a few. First stop was the other open air site in Berlin that I hadn’t seen on my last trip – the East Side Gallery, where a long stretch of the wall was left standing and painted with murals by prominent artists following its fall. The gallery was spectacular, yet disappointing at the same time. The back of the wall, where several pieces had been removed so locals could access then Spree Riverside, had been left for taggers and Graffiti artists to do their thing (and there were some skillful pieces amongst them. What was disappointing was that the artist’s murals had not only been  tagged by those with little respect but that there was additional graffiti not by artists but by random people, some of them tourists, leaving their mark, promoting their own nationalism or just drawing rude bits on the artworks. What created this gallery was a pivotal moment in history and many of the artists responsible for the original murals captured the poignancy of that moment. The other curious thing was that where the murals had been refreshed or recreated in 2009, the artists had added an email or web address instead of a signature. The future of artistic signatures perhaps?

From the East side gallery we caught the train to Checkpoint Charlie. The outdoor memorial, which weaved its way around several building sites last time I was here, seemed a bit more concentrated than last time I was here (probably partially because so many of the buildings that were under construction have now been completed. In any case, there was plenty of information to se. For me perhaps the most interesting was a series of photos of the border crossing in May 1964 when it was a series of fortifications rather than a wall and the 8 line border crossing checkpoint that it subsequently became. The reason why this photo series was so interesting to me was that it was taken within months of my mother’s visit here and this is where she would have no doubt crossed from the West to the East when she visited. Just down the road, the original Checkpoint Charlie border crossing guard’s box stands in the middle of the street. What should really be a haunting reminder of the strict controls here and the number of people killed trying to flee to the west, some of them just months before the crossing was opened for good, has now become a tacky tourist trap where you can pay to have your photo taken with young Germans dressed as DDR Border guards and get your passport stamped with Checkpoint Charlie. I did get my passport stamped at Santa Claus village but getting it stamped here seems very wrong and completely disrespectful to what went on here only a few decades ago. For the record I also wasn’t tempted to buy a Border guard’s hat or equip myself for the apocalypse with a cold war era gas mask.

A few blocks away in a non-descript laneway, one of the watchtowers from the walk is still standing – there are only a few of these throughout the city. What makes this one interesting is that it is just standing there, with nothing around it except apartment buildings and wasteland. No monument, no souvenir shop, just a decaying tower reminding people of the division in their city less than three decades ago. In the park of the apartment building 50 metres away there are three painted pieces of the wall. Of all the memorials and commemorations of the wall, the most understated is probably one of the most revealing and informative. Throughout the city, the path of the wall has been marked by a line of cobblestones in the pavement, created from the rubble of the wall sections.

From here we headed to somewhere a bit warmer and more modern – Potsdamer Platz. The Sony Centre was open but alas (poor Dan) not the Sony shop. After looking at the dining options – I really needed a break from pork – we chose the same Australian themed café that I had eaten at last time. It’s called Coroboree and predictably includes kangaroo and crocodile on the menu. We actually ended up ordering off their fusion menu – I had a Newcastle brown ale and beefsteak pie (I guess that was Aussie – Irish fusion?) and Dan had Tandoori chicken which came with fries and stir fried veges (Asian – Indian Aussie pub fusion?) There was a heavy emphasis on cabbage in the stir fried veges which I didn’t think was very modern Australian but I did pinch quite a portion of the vegetables. Not that we had seen one anywhere, but what I really felt like was a fully vegetarian menu. Despite Dan’s reluctance to eat at an Australian themed restaurant in Germany, the food was really good and gave us the respite from the wind to steel ourselves for the rest of our walking tour.

First though, we had to visit a Christmas Market for the last time. It was a pretty flash one here at Potsdamer Platz, complete with one of those long slides that had been turned into a tobogganing/ tyre tube ride with the addition of fake snow. First stop was the crepe stand. They make the crepes here while you wait. They pour the batter on a large round hotplate and use a stick of dowel with a handle to spread the batter out and a big long thin spatula to turn it. Dan had his the traditional German way with Nutella and I had mine the traditional Tracy way with Zitrone und Zucker (lemon and sugar). We kept wandering around the market and may have found a perfect gift for someone on my Christmas list.

From here we wandered to the Holocaust Memorial. The only way to get a true sense of this memorial and the feeling of despair that it is designed to engender is to visit it. Photographs just don’t capture that feeling. I also recommend visiting at different times of day and different seasons. My experience on this visit, on a cold windy night in almost complete darkness was a different experience to my visit five years ago when the memorial was covered in snow with bright blue skies above.

From here we went around the Brandenburg gate, thankful we had come here a few days ago as workmen were putting up some kind of barricade around the gate and the Tiergarten in front of it – presumable for some kind of New Year’s celebration. From here we walked across to the Reichstag, which because it was probably the one monument open in Berlin that day, had quite a lengthy queue and extensive security screening to get in,. By now it was 5:30pm and we had come to the end of Tracy’s walking tour of Berlin (aided by the lonely Planet encounter guide). We decided to walk along Unter den Linden to Alexanderplatz and catch the train from there to the Hauptbahnhof. If we looked at the map more clearly, we would have realised that we could have walked from the Reichstag to the Hbf in about 15 minutes. The stroll down Unter den Linden, though enabled us to purchase tacky souvenirs and a 1960s map of the division of Germany.

Our plan was to sit and warm up with a hot chocolate at Starbucks in the train station and then maybe grab some dinner on the train if we were still hungry. That plan went off the rails when Starbucks was closed. Dan decided to grab his final Bratwurst (which came with chips instead of a roll) and I went and looked at shoes in the only retail store open in Berlin. I almost bought a pair too but decided that perhaps carrying another pair of shoes for a week or so on and off trains would be a bad idea. I am also sure I will find at least one pair I like in the Boxing Day sales in London.

So it was here we bid Berlin and Germany (and the Christmas markets) farewell and boarded our overnight train to Paris. The train compartment was a lot more compact than the one I had on my journey from Berlin to Zurich. There were two bunks on one side and a compartment with shower and toilet a door width away. The basin in the bathroom swung one way to allow use of the toilet and the other to allow you to shower. It was cramped but still usable. The water only came on for a minute or so at a time, presumably to encourage you not to use too much water and soap up without the water running. There was space up the top for our bags but it would have been a herculean effort to get them up there so we just left them on the floor. That was a bit of a blunder come morning because the bottom bed folds up to become three seats and the breakfast is delivered with a table that hooks on near the window and stretches in front of two of the seats, exactly where our bags were. The breakfast wasn’t stellar but it was OK – a basket of bread rolls, to share – two orange juices each, a sweet pastry and some spreads – liverwurst, Philly cheese, butter and raspberry jam.  It also came with what I thought was yoghurt but turned out to be a yoghurt sized container of apple sauce and a filter coffee. It was reasonably satisfying and readied us for a day in Paris.

Christmas themed activities – 24  War museums and model shops – 2.5  Design experiences – 2