I can see why members of my family have a habit of moving to Berlin "for a few months" and staying there for the next four or five years. It seems like a very livable city. Funky, yet sophisticated. On one side of the massive park you have the hippies, on the other side you have the yuppies. Somewhere around there you also have normal people, and they all seem to be mixing quite happily.
I love a town that can be easily navigated by rail, and between the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn I managed to get to nearly everywhere I had a mind to go. I wasn't there for long, though. Next time I'll have to actually visit Berlin, rather that just stop over for a few days.
But, fortunately, some good little holiday fairy wispered the words "bike tour" in my ear, and I managed to see most of the big sights in my first day.
I can thoroughly recommend Fat Tire Bike Tours as having a nice mix of toodling around the city and getting a bit of a history lesson (plus, they take you to a beer garden in the middle of the park for lunch - so very German).
My tourguide was a Kiwi, and I quite enjoyed his sense of humour. His face wasn't bad, either. My heart will always belong to Peter-From-NYCe-Wheels, but Francis from Fat Tire Bike Tours can turn my head whenever he likes.
There are a lot of bears in Berlin. Fibreglass ones. They mass produced them at some point and every other business seems to have a luridly painted fibreglass bear out the front. This, in spite of the fact that I couldn't find a European bear in the zoo. Asiatic bears and polar bears, yes, but your typical this-may-kill-you-if-you-get-lost-in-these-woods bear? No. Maybe it was there somewhere and I just missed it.
For some reason, zoos and gardens are always on my list of must-see places when I visit somewhere. I'll also try to see a museum or a gallery if I have time, but if I don't, then it's the gardens at the top of my list and zoos somewhere around second. I don't know why, because I'm actually a little bored with zoos.
"Oh, yeah. It's a lemur. Again. And, look - there's another elephant..."
I was a little weirded out by the way the Berlin zoo put animals from different parts of the world in the same enclosures. I can understand putting ostriches in with African ungulates, but emus? And why were there kangaroos right next to capybaras? There didn't seem to be much logic to the layout - which is probably why I couldn't find any European bears.
However, it must be said that the park next to the zoo - the massive park in the middle of town - totally rocks. The Tiergarten is massive, and so very woodsy and parksy. I didn't see any animals (apart from a dead mouse) in the "animal garden", though, which seemed a bit of a shame. It did have naked people in it, but that's Germany for you. For some reason, if you give them a patch of grass or sand and some sun, they feel compelled to expose as much skin as possible. Between sun exposure and smoking, it's a wonder Germany isn't a cancer factory.
Fortunately there seems to be some sort of pattern to this and you won't see naked people at every park or beach. You will probably see boobs, though. Mostly on the women, but no guarantees...
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