On Thursday we arrived in Berlin for a late lunch before our Berlin orientation tour with Leigh. It was both funny and informative, included most of the major sights and gave us a taster for the two days ahead.

Yesterday morning we started at the Topography of Terror, an open air museum built along a section of the Berlin Wall on the now derelict block of land that housed the Gestapo headquarters. It details the evolution of the Nazis and their regime of terror, displaying victims and, in particular, perpetrators. It's a very simple but fascinating display.

Next we headed over to the Holocaust Memorial, stopping on the way to see the carpark that stands over where Hitler's bunker was. It was a weird feeling to stand right over the spot where he and Eva Braun ended it all. It is very nondescript, with only one sign containing a small amount of information about the bunker - people do not want to memorialize this spot nor have it become a gathering point for neo-Nazis and other Hitler based cults.

The Holocaust Memorial was opened in 2005 in memory of the Jewish victims across Europe. It consists of a 19,000 square metres site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or square columns arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. Apparently the blocks are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and it is definitely a very isolating place. The temperature in the middle is 8 degrees colder than outside and in some points you can no longer see any of the buildings as though you've been consumed by it. Instead of memorial, the Germans use the word "denkmal" which loosely translated means "think about it" and this memorial is the perfect place for taking time to do just that.

Underneath the memorial is a small museum that takes a very human perspective in presenting the holocaust. There are old letters from victims and survivors, a display of familes across Europe that tracks their lives and suffering throughout WWII, a room full of booths where you can listen to different survivor accounts from massacres and concentration camps, and a wall full of victims faces young and old. There were people who were clearly learning about it for the first time - their looks of shock and disgust and later their tears said it all. A lot of time and effort has been put into creating a space to learn and reflect. They have created a very special and important site here.

After that cheerful morning we went to Hackescher Markt (Hacke's Market), an area filled with good little eating places. We had an absolutely delicious lunch trying local food before walking across to Museum Island (yes it is actually a museum in the middle of the city that houses many of Berlin's museums) to the Pergamon Museum. This place has some controversial but magnificent pieces: the Museum's namesake the Pergamon Altar, and the eighth gate of the city of Babylon, the giant Ishtar Gate. It was built around 575 BC on orders of King Nebuchadnezzar. The tiles made of the precious stone lapis lazuli and the huge tiled lions are in such good condition, it really is an amazing feeling to walk through this ancient and special gate. My other favorite was the Islamic art section. Their jewelry and metal work are so beautifully intricate, as are the vivid colours they use in their work such as a lovely array of blues. The old hand written Korans were very special as was the Apollo room - a reception room from a broker's home in Aleppo, Syria that was commissioned during the Ottoman Period. The reason they are controversial is of course (like with the British) how they were "acquired" - countries such as Turkey would like their pieces back!

Before heading back to the hotel for an exciting night of group clothes washing we walked up to Orienbergstrasse, a very cool street that contains the Kunsthaus Tacheles, an old squat that now houses artists studios and a bar. Every inch of the buildings are covered in graffiti so it was fun to walk the different levels and look around. The crowd were a bit interesting and after some weird offers we decided it was time to leave!

This morning was the highlight of Berlin for me. Seven of us set off on a 16 person bike tour of east Berlin, learning about the Cold War and life in a divided Berlin over a leisurely five hours and 14km. Our guide Alex was fantastic and we had so much fun together. We saw the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall, the East Side Gallery, now covered in very cool graffiti art, we cycled beautiful sections of the rivers and parks and really got to see a part of Berlin that most tourists normally wouldn't. We stopped at a Soviet memorial to Soviet soldiers who died during the Battle of Berlin in WWII. It is positively monumental in size and ironically the red marble used was taken from Hitler's Chancellery - one tyranny becoming another. We shared and huge and delicious lunch at a Turkish place thanks to the large number of Turkish immigrants in Germany before following the Berlin Wall (now a line of bricks making a trail across roads, footpaths and derelict spaces) all the way back in to town to Checkpoint Charlie, learning about successful and unsuccessful wall crossings and of course the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989.

We finished off our day with a long walk down the main street of Berlin to the Europa shopping centre for a spot of shopping before returning to the lovely restaurant around the corner from our hotel where we enjoyed our group dinner on our first night here.

Berlin has been great fun and is such a cool place to spend time. It reminds me of Melbourne in some ways in that it has lots of green spaces and each neighbourhood has it's own centre with shops, cafes and restaurants. It's a very fun city!