Beer paradise

Photo: Hacker-Pschorr's tent from the middle, right next to the band.

Being one of the best-known festivals all over Europe, Oktoberfest takes over the city of München annually for almost an entire month. Can you guess which month is it about? It depends on every year, but it is mainly September :) Even though, the name comes after its first celebration in October 1810 - to honor the marriage of the future Bavarian Kings. King Ludwig I ordered Münchner breweries to produce special beer for the occasion, and still so it is nowadays! Six local breweries serve their Oktoberfest beer at the festival: Hacker-Pschorr, Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu, Paulaner, Löwenbräu, Hofbräu München and Agustiner Bräu. But festival's history has also a sad side: it has been cancelled 24 times due to several wars, economic problems and diseases - such as both World Wars, the Great Depression and cholera. 

Oktoberfest is held in Theresienwiese, a park located nearby Munich's central station. The mentioned breweries make way for 14 big beer tents every year accompanied by 20 smaller structures in charge of providing typical Bavarian food and drinks to the visitors. Besides that, the whole complex is amused by music and even a big parade takes place on the first Sunday to kickstart the festival. 

I took the picture above at one of the most traditional tents at the festival, The tent is called "Himmel der Bayern" (Bavarian Heaven) and belongs to Hacker-Pschorr brewery, a result of two 600-year-old family-breweries that merged in 1972. It is one of the biggest with a capacity for almost 10.000 people. 

Arm yourself with patience if you want to sit inside a tent, reservations are usually sold out months before the event. Or do what I did: avoid weekends and go early on a weekday. The door opening is at 10am, so if you get there around 9am the line is not very long. I quickly got inside and found a table for 8 people right next to the band!

Fields of horror

Concentration camp built by the Nazis in 1936 in Oranienburg, town located less than 50km away from Berlin. It is quite simple to get there: you just need to take the #1 S-Bahn line (S1) all the way to Oranienburg Bhf (which it is the last stop, easy). Once there, the memorial is only a 20-min walk away but it is also possible to take the bus #804 direction Malz and get off at "Gedenkstätte" bus stop.

Photo: view over the prisoners' main field and what was one of those 68 barracks. 

I must say this is one of the most impressive places I have been so far to. It looks so huge and empty nowadays that it seems almost impossible to imagine how full it used to be. For us to have an idea, the memorial has replaced the total amount of 68 prisoners' barracks by filling the spots with grey stones (photo above). There are 4 rows of them in the main camp plus 18 other located in the "small camp" - a part of the concentration camp that was built due to the increase of prisoners. 

If I remember well, there are still two barracks standing in the mentioned "small camp" and, even it is impossible to imagine the conditions in which the prisoners were treated, you can still see bunches of 3-floor bunk beds inside those tiny rooms, leaving any space to move. 

The first ones to get there were mostly political prisoners against the Nazi regime, but soon would also start arriving people considered racially or biologically inferior to "Aryan race" such as Polish and Soviets.

The entrance to the area is free but, if you like history, you should not miss their guided visits (14€) in English, German or Spanish.

Golden Gate

This is definitely the most common landmark in Germany, mainly because of the history behind it. It is located in Parisier Platz, replacing one of the former entrances to Berlin (specifically, the road to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, which gave the name to the building). Nowadays, it is considered a memorial for Europe’s sad history but also its later unity and peace.

It is very nice to see at night, since it is less crowded and the lights make it golden. The boulevard starting right in front of it is Unter den Linden, famous for being one of the largest. This long avenue goes from Parisier Platz until Museuminsel, a piece of land between the Spree river where five internationally important museums gather: Bode-, Altes-, Neues-, Pergamonmuseum and the Altes Nationalgallerie. Along the boulevard, you can find other buildings as important as those, such as the Berliner Dom, Deutsches Historisches Museum or the Stadtschloss.

On the west side of the gate, Tiergarten park spreads over 210ha being the third biggest urban park in the country. Right before getting into the park, the "Reichstag" rises up, an interesting building which I have fully dedicated another post.

Home to the Bundestag

As I have already introduced in a past post about the Brandenburger Tor and its surroundings, the west side of the commemorative building leads you to one of the biggest urban parks in Germany, named Tiergarten.

Right before getting into the park, the Reichstag building rises up, another spot full of history. It used to be home of the German Empire, but it soon got ruined after fires and wars - specially during the II World War. When Germany was divided (1933-1990), the parliament of the German Democratic Republic (communist Germany) met in the "Palast der Republik" in East Berlin, while the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany met in the "Bundeshaus" in Bonn - federal city which was the former capital of the democratic Germany from 1949 until its reunification in 1990. Once Germany got reunified again, the German Parliament met back in the Reichstag, being called Bundestag from then onwards.

It is possible to visit the inside for free – which I highly recommend, specially getting to the rooftop of the glass dome while enjoying the views over Berlin. The dome has been provided with a circular ramp around the glass structure on the pic above that will take you to the top meanwhile offering information, pictures and old documentation about its past. The purple seats point out the main chamber where the legislative issues are debated.