Hallo!

Early this week, I travelled to Europe with my friend to attend Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany. Before we arrived in Hamburg, we spent two days in Berlin to visit the city. Here are the cool things we did during our stay:

Victory Column
The first activity we did once we arrived in Berlin was to visit the Victory Column (pictured on the right). From the top of the monument, you are able to view the city. It is located in the centre of a roundabout very close to the Tiergarten, one of the most popular park in Berlin. 

East Side Gallery
The following morning, we took the U-Bahn (subway) and headed to see the Berlin Wall, which is also known as the East Side Gallery. The 1,316 metre (4,318 feet) long section of the wall is covered with various paintings. Many portions of the wall have been damaged by erosion with time and graffitis since some parts are not protected with a fence.

Brandenburg Gate
This is the city’s only ancient gate remaining. The construction of this landmark started in 1788 and was completed in 1791. What is interesting about it is that it is aligned with the Berlin Victory Column. You can see the tip of it on the picture below.

Topography of Terror
This outdoor and interior museum housed the headquarters of the Gestapo (secret police) during the Third Reich.

Photo: Topographie des Terrors

Checkpoint Charlie
Checkpoint Charlie was the checkpoint between the American and Soviet sectors of Berlin. After the construction of the Berlin Wall, it primarily served as a crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War.

Reichstag
The Italian High Renaissance building served as the seat of parliament in the German Empire. Today, it  functions as the seat of the federal German parliament. 

Berlin Tempelhof Airport
This was probably one of my favorite part of Berlin. The Tempelhof Airport is an abandoned airport that ceased operations in 2008. The airfield has two parallel runways (09R/27R and 09L/27L) with a length of more than 6,000 feet. It only had one taxiway that was basically circled the runways.

We rented bikes for about one hour and rolled down on the runways and taxiways! We saw a Douglas C-54 of the USAAF parked under the terminal  (pictured above) and a Let L-410 Turbojet that was used for fire training purposes. The hour flew by really fast!

After our passage through the abandoned airport, we headed to the city’s main railway station (Berlin Hauptbahnhof) to take a train to Hamburg. In my next post, I will talk about Aircraft Interiors Expo 2017 in Hamburg!

Nicolas