Ich bin ein Berliner (I am a donut?)

Berlin. A mix of the slightly old and the new, the eclectic and the down right strange. It is a hippies paradise, but it also has a chic side to it. In short it is the most cosmpolitan city we have seen yet. For pure tourist sites, Berlin has a good number of things to offer, the Brandenburg gate,
the Reichstag, Checkpoint Charlie, the prominent bits of the wall. These we saw in one afternoon and gave them their full due I think. We had help though, from our friends Andreas and Annelie, who drove us around and gave us what I would call the "check-box" tour. Since we had four days in Berlin we had time to scratch beneath the surface and see the eccentricness of the city. We went to an 'art gallery' and sure, they had art on display (and for sale if you want) but the place was also a bar. It was in a 4 storey building and each story had a different type of art, including a girl whispering in a creepy kind of way "come in, come in, dont be scared" which was very inviting. In the courtyard outside there was art made of metal, sculptures I guess they would be called and you could even get a glimpse of new ones being welded into shape. The place is famous apparently but I cant remember the name of it, apologies.
Another cool part of Berlin is the East Side Gallery. It is a kilometre or so of the old Berlin Wall that has been turned into an art gallery of painted murals. It is a good way to make something that was negative into a positive. Some of the artwork is a little abstract, but most of it has some kind of political aspect and most of that has leftist tendancies, which I found ironic given the history of the wall.
Berlin is apparently a poor city, its Mayor won the election with the phrase "Berlin is poor. But sexy" and I guess that really does sum it up. Poland coming soon.