Tag Archives: 360CodeRemoval

Today when leaving Berlin, I thought I’d write this small observational post, as I didn’t include this in my previous post on Berlin – Berlin is very green and has a lot of open spaces and parks but at the same time also has a lot of construction going on, as well as a lot of vacant empty plots. It has the most graffiti out of all the cities we’ve visited so far and lacks a city “centre” as such. There are also a lot of buildings that seem run down/derelict and in need of lots of TLC. A lot of this can be explained by the recent history of Berlin, but I think it makes it an interesting city, unique in our travels so far and I loved all the green parks everywhere.

On to Paris next, hopefully the weather will be nicer.

Auf Wiedersehen

I’ve been taking pictures of some of the birds I’ve seen throughout my travels so far and have uploaded them below with the locations I spotted them in. Maybe Deryk (he’s my neighbour) will be able to identify them and will leave a comment below….

Here we are in not so sunny Berlin. The weather has been cloudy for the past couple of days with some light rain today. We’re off tomorrow to Paris so hopefully some sunny weather can be expected.

I’ve found the German language has been easier to understand and pronounce than the Nordic languages of the past couple of weeks, but we’re off to Paris tomorrow, so we have our phrasebooks ready…

We’ve visited the Wall and Holocaust memorial as well as a museum called the ‘Topography Of Terrors’ which is all about the 3rd Reich and its atrocities committed during the 1930/40s. A short walk away from this museum was Checkpoint Charlie. All that remains today is the sign telling you you’re leaving the American sector, as well as a US army border booth. Across the road is a panorama theatre called “The Wall” which is a panorama of everyday life set against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall, on a fictitious autumn day in the 1980’s. This exhibition was really moving and I felt conveyed the feelings and experiences of people on each side of the Wall. It highlighted the reality of suddenly having your city and neighbourhood split in two by a concrete wall which you couldn’t cross due to certain death meeting any attempt.

On a semi-sunny afternoon we payed a visit to the Reichstag (German Parliament) and Brandenburg Gate.

This was sadly the site of my 1st scam in Europe (both this trip and last time), the details of which will not be entered into here. I was caught off-guard and will not be scammed again. I think my ‘scam-watch/scam-guard’ had been lower than it should have been due to our time in England/Scandinavia where the sorts of scams which plague mainland Europe haven’t surfaced and as such I’d let my guard down. Suffice to say this sort of put a downer on the rest of that day and a sour note on my time in Berlin, but the lesson has been learned and I’m moving on (Note: nothing was stolen and no personal harm occurred. Also this was a new scam I hadn’t heard of before)

Today we visited Museum Island to go to the Berlin Cathedral and Pergamon Museum. The inside of the Berlin Cathedral was quite spectacular and it’s the first completely round church/cathedral I’ve been in. After climbing several hundred stairs, we were greeted with a 360* view of Berlin –

Afterwards, we visited the Pergamon Musem and saw some ancient Mesopotamian artefacts, as well as some sculptures from the Roman Empire. Freya really wanted to see the Ishtar Gate (she did her Yr 11 Assignment on this).

Currently it’s raining again, and we’ve just finished packing a heap of stuff into two large DHL boxes to be posted home tomorrow as our suitcases were overflowing and our flight tomorrow has a strict 20kg limit, plus now we have more room for more stuff (Swiss chocolate perhaps….)

Our hotel here is really nice, the room is huge, it’s probably about the size of a small 1 bedroom apartment and even has its own washing machine and dryer (which we’ve used 3 times). The only downside is the Internet access is expensive, unless you use it in the lobby where you can obtain a free 1hr voucher code from reception. I’ve discovered that this code also works for the wireless connection in our hotel room so we’ve been stockpiling vouchers for use during the evenings (so far I think we’ve used about 10 vouchers).

Auf Wiedersehen

We leave Copenhagen, Denmark and Eurovision excitement behind today and continue our journey onwards to Berlin, Germany.

Since I last posted about Copenhagen, we’ve visited the Amalienborg Palace museum, where we could see the personal study’s of past kings/queens of Denmark as well as a small art collection of the royal family. A short walk from Amalienborg Palace was the Citadel, one of Europe’s best preserved 17^th Century fortifications, which still houses military offices and looks like a 5 pointed star when viewed from above, surrounded by a moat. It was very green and lush and had some nice walking tracks around the embankment walls, as well as a windmill. Not sure what the windmill was for…

Next stop was the tower of Our Saviours Church in Christianshavn. There are about 400 steps that you need to climb to reach the top of the tower, but it gives you a spectacular view over Copenhagen (although it was a bit wobbly as it’s made of wood, so the tower does sway in the wind slightly). Did you know Jules Verne climbed the spire in the 1880s and was inspired to include it in his book ‘Journey To The Centre Of The Earth’ –

On Saturday before we went to Eurovision, I visited the Copenhagen Sand Sculpture festival which had just opened (its forecast to rain on Sun/Monday, so I’m not sure how long the festival will run) –

Then a stroll up Nyhavn canal to the King’s Gardens to wait for Freya (she’d stayed back at the hotel to talk to Chris as she wasn’t interested in coming to sand sculptures). It was probably about 20*and sunny and the park was full of Copenhagians who had decided that it was perfect weather for picnics, sunbaking (sometimes nearly naked) and other outdoor stuff. There is also a much bigger smoking culture over here, as nearly everywhere we went in Copenhagen (and Sweden/Norway) people were smoking. I wasn’t even able to walk through this park without being smothered in smoke in places (which I found very irritating). The only park I found in Copenhagen where I didn’t encounter many smokers was the grounds of the Citadel.

We then visited the David Collection, which is a 4 floor museum (free entry). It also contains one of the world’s largest collections of Islamic art, which was interesting to see. The free audioguide was very informative.

After this we hurried back to our hotel to get ready for the Eurovision Grand Final.

We ran out of time to visit Tivoli Gardens or take a wander around Christianshavn and will have to leave these till next time we’re in Copenhagen.

Farvel

P.S. Yes, the internet at this hotel is still crap. I found they’re using software for their connection management which hasn’t been updated in the past 3 yrs. It seems the connection can’t cope with the number of users trying to use it during the day, so you need to wait until late at night before getting a decent connection.

Well as you would already know, the winner was/is Denmark!!

We had an excellent view of the stage from our seats, which was surprising considering how late in the ticket sales we managed to secure seats. We were up the back of the arena directly in front of the stage at the back of the first tier of seating, seated behind supporters from Ireland and UK and in between supporters from Russia and Sweden (I think). The arena itself is about the size of the Sydney Entertainment Centre so most seats had a good view of the stage (except for those in the rafters behind the stage)

Seeing the show live was awesome and you got to see lots of little things that don’t get shown on the TV, for example when the host is getting the votes at the end, I assumed she/they would normally have stood there the entire time, but what you didn’t see was the man run onto stage whilst the 4^th country was announcing it’s votes and shove a stool under her dress. You also didn’t see him run back onto stage later on and remove the stool from under her dress, or frequently appearing with a bottle of water for the host to drink from whilst countries were announcing their first 7 points.

You also didn’t see the stage crew guy slide across the stage and sweep the mic stage off during the performance of Norway whilst the singer was facing a camera at the back of the stage –

Also for those interested in how they do the complete 360* shots around the performers, this is done by a guy with a stedi-cam attached to his waist running in from one side of the stage, sweeping around the performers and then running back off the stage, the entire time out of view of the next camera coming in for the next shot, whether it be a fixed camera in the middle of the audience, a boom camera sweeping in from the side or the ceiling camera sweeping down from the roof.

Grandma as promised here’s a video of Ireland’s performance Live –

The only downside of seeing the show live, is that I missed the commentary from Julia and Sam. Also sometimes I couldn’t hear the words or the songs or what the host was saying as the audience was too loud/music too loud.

Otherwise a great time was had by all and I’m looking forward to next year’s show in Denmark, watched from our lounge room in Australia (it’s very expensive to see it live 🙂 )

Farvel

P.S. No issues with trains home from the show this time 🙂