Marc Gregoire’s Blog

Last week I went to Berlin on a business trip, arrived on Thursday and left on Sunday. I basically only had Saturday to go see the city. So on Saturday I woke up, had breakfast (I was missing some American style breakfast with eggs, bacon …) and prepared to go out. I was expecting it to be a normal, quiet day doing some sightseeing. Nothing could be further from the truth however … Weather was not so good, it was not cold, but from time to time there was some rain. Anyway, I went to the city center (“Mitte”) with the Fernsehturm, see pictures below, and went to Alexa which is a big shopping center close by.

In Alexa I went to the Mediamarkt and when entering the TV floor I was greeted with a humongous 103″ (= 262 cm) plasma TV. The TV was playing a Blu-Ray movie in full HD and it was simply gorgeous. 😀 I could sit relatively close to it and still have a beautiful image. The price was also lower than I expected, “only” 49.999 euro, but still outside my budget though 😛 No picture of this, since I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside …

After leaving Alexa, it was lunch time so I went to the closest McDonald’s to have a Big Mac. I was planning to go to the Brandenburger Tor after lunch, so that’s what I did. However, on my way I bumped into a huge number of trucks playing music. It turned out it was the gay pride parade to celebrate the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender life. There were more than 30 different trucks all playing music and people dancing on them. They were driving very very slowly in the direction of the Brandenburger Tor. Below are some pictures of the parade.

After I saw all the trucks passing by I arrived at the Brandenburger Tor. The neighborhood of the Brandenburger Tor was completely car-free since there was a large stage and 3 or 4 humongous screens (80 m2) between Brandenburg Gate and Victory Column. It was a public viewing of the Euro 2008 European Football Championship and is the largest public viewing in Germany and probably in the whole of Europe. They were expecting between half a million and 1 million people to watch the final between Germany and Spain on Sunday.

On Saturday when I was there, there were some acts and groups playing on the stage. “Only” around 100.000 people were there on Saturday, estimated… Most of the groups I never heard of before, but all the German people did since they were singing along with them. There were two that I know, Hot Banditos and Rednex. Rednex played their big hit from the nineties, Cotton Eye Joe. Security was pretty tight on the event. When entering with a bag, security officers checked the bag for its contents. Also, most if not all people where strip-searched before allowed to enter. Below is a picture of this event where you can see 2 of the huge screens.

A picture of the Brandenburger Tor with the stage behind it.

There were a lot of places to eat something, mostly sausages, like in the following picture (Wurst = sausage) 😉

During my sightseeing I also saw some interesting garages. The first one was a Ferrari garage displaying a used Ferrari F430 F1. It’s only 165.000 euro 😉

The next was a huge VW garage. There I saw the usual VW cars, but more importantly, I saw some Bentleys and the cherish on the cake, the Bugatti Veyron. The first time ever I saw a Bugatti Veyron in real life. 😀 It was behind glass, but still, mighty impressive! Please bow out of respect and admire the next pictures 😉

Of course I also saw some of the more usual things to see on a sightseeing trip through Berlin. Below are some pictures of this.