Cycling through Berlin

My first time visiting Berlin, Germany was in September of this year.  The city is dynamic and we had a wonderful time.

Of course I learned about World War II and the aftermath of it throughout my studies, but actually visiting a city that has all that history makes it an incredibly powerful experience. And I want to know more now….there’s so much to understand!

It’s hard to imagine just how much the people living in the city have been through over the past 60 or 70 years. Usually when I think of wars, I think of something far in the past. But World War II was recent, and the Berlin wall didn’t come down until late 1989 – only a little more than 20 years ago.

As a result, I wanted to take it all in when I was there. Usually when I travel, my main plan is to explore by walking a lot.  Not necessarily visit all the museums or the monuments or the galleries.  But in Berlin, it was different. I wanted to see where Hitler’s bunker was, and the remnants of the Berlin Wall that remained. I wanted to try to get some sort of understanding of how this city was divided and how the people who lived on the other sides of the walls must have felt.  And the best way to see all of this in such a short time in addition to getting a real feel for the layout of the city was to take a bicycling tour around Berlin.

I highly recommend other Americans to do this if you visit Berlin! It’s a more creative, fun way of seeing the city while meeting new people and getting a little exercise.  They have a number of tours throughout the day in the non winter months.  Fat Tire Bike Tours is the company we booked our tour through and it was 4 and a half hours long. The company is doing well, as they also have tours in London and Barcelona and there were 20 other people along with us!

We stopped along the way at all the major sights, including Hitler’s Bunker, the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie, among others. We also stopped for lunch at a beer garden in the middle of the Tiergarten park. About a 6 mile journey in total.