Experience...Part 4

The next day was hopping on a plane again this time to Berlin we arrived there on the 30th of December. New Years Eve at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was a truly enormous and mind boggling experience. The police monitoring the area estimated by the time midnight rolled around 1 MILLION people had gathered. There was a huge stage put on by Nokia to run the NYE Concert – in attendance were the Scissor Sisters and Sugababes amongst other popular (in Germany anyway) acts. The fireworks were great and everyone was pretty well behaved though despite having the alcohol flowing freely all night. We crawled into bed about 2.30am absolutely knackered and didn’t emerge until nearly midday Jan 1st. We had big plans about all the things we wanted to see the next day but of course we didn’t get to them all. We went into the Reichstag, a pretty impressive government building, we had to queue to get in and walk the gangway through the glass dome roof. We took some pics of the Brandenburg gate, the Victory tower, and meandered through Pottsdam Square. We visited the 2km stretch of the Berlin wall still standing and looking very artistic. We then saw Checkpoint Charlie and stopped for some lunch. We managed also to get in a couple of movies in the evenings, the first one being Night In The Museum with Ben Stiller and the next one being Eragon. We didn’t do everything we wanted to but we still saw heaps….I’ve decided Berlin is one cool city and is a definite must see on any Europe tour.

We flew back to Cologne on the 3rd and had one day on the 4th to prepare for Lapland. So the 5th was spent literally travelling from Germany to Swedish Lapland. We had to be driven to Dusseldorf airport, half hour, then catch a plane from Dusseldorf to Copenhagen, Denmark, then after a 5 hours stop over a plane from Copenhagen to Stockholm, then a smaller 50 seater plane from Stockholm out to the tiny village of Wilhelminia. From there our tour operator drove us to a cabin to spend the night and we met Pasi our dog sledding guide for the next three days. I had my first taste of reindeer meat that night. It took me a little while but I decided I did like it afterall.

The Reichstag a very imposing building that was never tainted
by the presence of Hitler's sham parliament. And that line
of people there? The queue to get in and ascend the glass dome.
Simone's attempt at an artsy shot of the Brandenburg Gate statue.
The NYE Nokia concert - 1 Million People there!
Jan 1st - Brandenburg Gate minus the hordes of tourists.

Inside the Reichstag looking down the the centre
of the glass dome.

The 2km stretch of "The Wall" still standing.

The Victory Tower
Checkpoint Charlie, in the background there are two lengthy
walls that have many stories about the area.