Central and Eastern Germany

Hi all

Have been touring Germany over the last week or so. I visited Heidelberg, Frankfurt, and Berlin to be precise. I will start with Heidelberg, a sleepy city of around 140,000 that has a beautiful old town and very picturesque hills. I walked up the hill to the castle and managed to get a good view of the city. There is also a very beautiful bridge over the river that lets you see down the river valley, very nice. After Heidelberg I took the short journey to Frankfurt am Main, the financial centre of Europe. Unfortunately this financial centre aspect of the city has resulted in the place being rather dull and with few things to do for tourists, especially in March. I ended up simply going to a soccer game to fill an afternoon, which was most enjoyable. After Frankfurt I went over to Berlin, the old Capital. Berlin is a very unique city and there is definetly a difference between east and west. East Berlin has many remenants of the cold war, with shabby buildings, cheaper food, and most of the nightlife while West Berlin is wealthier and much more of a residential part of the city. There are still parts of the Berlin wall remaining and there is definetly a sense of need to preserve the remaining bits of it to remind the world about what it was like for so many years. Berlin is slowly getting back on its feet with restoration projects in the former east Berlin part, where most of the historic buildings are located. The most important and touristy street, Unter den Linden, has a lot of construction projects going on to return it to its prewar glory. The problem lies in that the city of Berlin is bankrupt and the federal government is not too amused about financing such projects, which means that most restoration projects are now being funded by the private sector, so who knows how long the stream of money will continue to come. Berlin is unique in that it is one of the few remaining places in Europe to still bear the scars of WWII, due to the lack of reconstruction of certain areas by the former GDR (east germany) and because some restoration projects intentionally left some of the smoke damage to serve as a reminder of how bad things were, over 80% of the city was damaged during the war. I am now in Copenhagen and will report on Denmark in a few days!!