Berlin on bike

I’ve been in Berlin recently. It was a great trip, because I love modern History and I could visit several places related to the World War II and the Cold War.

Berlin is a huge capitol; the city centre, which is called Berlin-Mitte, is enormous. It’s almost as big as the whole city of Barcelona. For this reason, we hired a bike. And it was a great idea. Berlin is totally adapted to the bike as an urban mobility; there are lots of cycle lanes, and many people move by bike.

Using bike let us move around the city on our own. When we got a highlight, we stopped and locked the bike. And of course, we had a much more better view of the urban reality that if we would have moved by metro.

We also visited Wannsee and Potsdam. To this purpose, we got the train from Alexanderplatz. In Wannsee we visited a villa where in 1942 took place a meeting between Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann and other Third Reich authorities to perpetrate the Final Solution to the "Jewish Question", the plan for the extermination of the European Jews. Today, the building serves as a memorial and education centre.

In Potsdam, we hired a bike again to visit the great Prussian palaces. Potsdam is a really-beauty city full of history, woods and amazing lakes. I had the opportunity of taking a bath in the Heiliger Lake, and the water was less cold than I imagined… We found a genuine ‘biertgarten’ (literally ‘a beer garden’), that is an outdoor area in which beer and local food are served. It was a great change to taste the German food far away of the touristic circuits.

To sum up, Germany is a nice place to visit, with great landscapes and plenty of History and kind people.