Insider Tour of Berlin

After the night at the HI I was still quite drained of energy from PukkelPOP. But I had to find another hostel. So I called all the hostels that had been recommended by other travelers, but they were all full. In desperation I asked the last one I called to suggest an alternative.

After a hike across town with my backpack I arrived at the Lette’m Sleep Inn. It sounded kind of cheesy but turned out to be a great hostel. It was the northern most hostel in the town and also in East Berlin, so before arrival I was a little hesitant about going, but what the heck, I’m on an adventure. It turned out to be in a great neighborhood filled with small local shops and restaurants and there is a one-block park directly across from it.

I moved my stuff in to the room and… Oh, it’s snowing right now in Blindenmarkt as I write this, so beautiful! I hope that I'll have a white birthday on the 6th! So anyway, I moved my stuff into the hostel and then two guys speaking Spanish came into the room talking about a tour. I understood what they were saying but it was different attempting to speak. Humoring my poor Spanish, but quickly crossed to the fringes of my Spanish knowledge, they asked me to join them for a tour of Berlin. Paul, Luis, (both from Mexico City) and I stopped for some Kebab as we made our way to the Bahnhof where the tour was to begin.

The Krakow students from the previous night had told me of a well-informed and electrified tour guide, named Brian, who was an orchestra conductor from Canada and spent his free time in Berlin giving tours. It turned out that we were in luck to have him guide us.

Right from the start [Brian's] great ability to speak, his vast knowledge and his honestly cheerful demeanor greatly absorbed us. It was quite apparent that he gave tours as a hobby and not for the money.

We saw many exciting things including: [German leaders: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels] [Hitler's grave; now a children's playground] [The Tresor were Moby and others created Techno] [some famous wall]

Under the Unter den Linden Platz where the Nazi's burned books not valuable to them has been commemorated by a monument designed by Micha Ullmann, which consists of an underground library with empty shelves and no door which can be seen through a transparent plastic window set into the ground.

Towards the end of the tour we arrived in Alexanderplatz and gathered around Brian as he told us of the events that lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Everyone was intently focused on Brian as he told the stories with so much drama that even he had to stop and remove his glasses to wipe a tear from his eye. Man, he was a great guide!

The tour was scheduled to be 3 hours. But five-and-a-half hours later we were still fixed with Brians enlightening tales of Berlin. I learned so much from Brian that I wanted to take the tour again to let everything cerebrally cure. But Brian told us that this was his last tour before he took a short vacation, thus no chance to take the tour again this week.

I emailed the company, Insider Tour, to give him a superb review and asked for his email address. I wanted to ask him about some language schools that he had recommended. (Brian has since emailed me back with the info and told me that he got stuck in Greece for a few days because of Sep.11)

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