I went to Berlin last weekend with Anthony and Padraig.

For me, it was a real nostagia trip. The last time I was there was in 1995 - the first city I stayed at in a youth hostel "on my own". When I was there last time, the Berlin wall had only been down for 6 years. I remember at the time walking through the Brandenburg gate and staring into East Berlin and being shocked. Back then, it was like a time warp - all of the buildings were at least 35 years old and in disrepair.

My other memory of Berlin at that time was that I was nearly conned by some shysters playing the shell game. I was sure that I knew what was wrong, but when they wanted me to bet 100DM I got suitably cautious and elected not to bet. Not so lucky was the fellow youth hosteller I was sight-seeing with, who was conned to the tune of about 500 DM.

Well, now, East Berlin was virtually unrecognizable. The first thing I noticed walking through the Brandenburg gate this time was a Starbucks. Many of the really old GDR buildings were knocked down - a lot of the others have been restored and painted etc.

 In fact, walking around Berlin, often the only easy way to tell whether you were in East Berlin or West Berlin was from the traffic lights.

In West Berlin, they look like this:

In East Berlin, they look like this:

Potzdamer Platz has been completely rebuilt:

(looking in the far left at the little green man you can see this was in East Berlin... that's about the only way you would know from looking).

We went out clubbing on the Saturday night to a club called Maria. The music was really cool, but somehow the club was really not very busy, even though it was a Saturday night. It seems the big parties in Berlin were elsewhere that night.

Next day, we took a walk around the Tiergarten. It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful city:

I particularly remember the sounds from the large bell tower in the gardens - it played quite complicated melodies that contributed to an eery, but peaceful, atmosphere. You could feel the history.

We weren't really so impressed with this art: