A Morning in the Cocktail Onion

On our first official day of sightseeing (where we came across Darth Vader) we saw what i guess is Berlin’s version of Centrepoint tower. It is easily the tallest structure in Berlin and kept popping up in the all the photos.

So we decided to hunt it down on day two. We did not know what it was called so Kurt dubbed it the cocktail onion.

Side note: If there is a sunny spot outside there is a place to sit and drink beer.

These deck chairs are all facing the coolest train station i have ever seen.

We have a connection with this station. Before we left we were trawling the web for documentaries on Berlin. We came across a full 60 minute doco on the building the Berlin-Hauptbahnhof (Central Station). It was about as riveting as a documentary on assembling an Ikea bookcase. Anyway the building is cool as the whole outer structure is glass.

And it also the first time I ever paid to have a pee. What was neat is that the ticket you got when you paid to go to the bathroom also allowed you have discounts at some of the stores in the station. Somehow it did not feel right to walk into Burger King and say “ I just had a slash around the corner – can I have my free fries”.

Back to the onion…

Getting around by train is just as easy as New York and Tokyo. Once you learn the codes, and colours it is a breeze. What was surprising was the size of the Ubahn trains. Each carriage is quite small and narrow – almost like a toy train.

They run every 5 minutes so getting a seat is not a problem.

Like all trains the internal speaker system is crap. Every announcement was “crackle…crackle…germanish..germanish…crackle..Platz”

The carriage buskers in NY were Mexican Mariachi bands in ours we had a lone guy with a piano accordion.

We got off at Alexanderplatz and followed the skyline to the onion. The foyer was deisgned by the same firm that designed High Schools in the 1960’s (but hey the Opera House on closer inspection has as much pebblecrete as a Greek front yard)