Berlin was cold and damp. I was surprised at how much green space there was until I realised that most of the city would have been destroyed during WWII and much of the rubble would have been under the parks I could see young Berliners jogging around. I wasn’t going to be able to tick off all the main tourist sightseeing goals – but, let’s face it, I don’t really do sightseeing anymore – and I’m not a tourist, I’m a traveller. My main aim was to find the Reichstag, get my Member-State-Parliament-Selfie, and find a little of the Cold War city I had seen in those old movies.

The easiest way for me, alone, to get to the Reichstag would have been by taxi. However, I elected to pick up a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus and enjoy an hour of audio-described adventure then hop-off at the stop for the parliament, which I was fairly sure was somewhere near the Brandenburg Gate. I was lucky that the Stadtrundfahrten (yes, yes, settle down – I don’t do ‘fart’ jokes), the White Bus, had its first stop just round the corner from the hotel (on Kurfürstendamm). Unluckily I had been handed a German leaflet (Fahrplan) to base my decisions on. Still, full of baseless optimism I found the bus vor dem Haupteinggang v. Karstadt. I bought a ticket, climbed on board, and stumbled to the back of the downstairs section to place myself as near as possible to an overhead speaker for the promised ‘Live Kommentar/live commentary’ that the leaflet suggested would be on Alle Touren.

In fairness the kommentar was excellent and I worked my way passed names that echoed with historic significance – Potsdamer Platz, Checkpoint Charlie, Alexanderplatz, Brandenburger Tor, Reichstag, Scheidemannstrasße, … oh, hey, wait a minute … stop the bus!

I had drifted off (as is my want), day-dreaming of black and white movies with Richard Burton, pretending I was Michael Caine (I was further distracted pondering on the idea that there was a Legoland at Stop 5, and how lovely Unter den Linden, at Stops 14 and 15, sounded) when they pulled in to Stop 17 (Reichstag, Scheidemannstrasße); I realised I wanted to get off there. Fortunately the bus stopped for a rest at Stop 17 and I managed to wake up and hop-off.

There was a smattering of tourists, mainly couples and groups of twittering Japanese girls. It was cold but dry. I found myself directed to an Information Centre and asked a tour guide:

How do I get into the Reichstag, please?

Have you a reservation, they responded.

Er, no. I thought … I just want to have a look around, maybe take some pictures.

There is a 42 week waiting list to tour the Reichstag, they explained patiently. You can book inside, here, or online.

Erm, I’m only here for two days. Where is the front of the building. I’ll just take a selfie and get back on my bus. Thank you.

They pointed me to the massive columned façade of the building (right beside the Information Centre) and went off to deal with proper tourists.

I spent the next few minutes trying to get a decent shot of me in front of the Reichstag, trying to get my sighpress.co.uk logo up the right way whilst avoiding the excitable teenagers who were attempting to make their group photos look more interesting by jumping up and down like … well, like teenagers.

I was just about to give up and find somewhere warm when an English speaking couple turned up and started to take photos. They turned out to be an artist and his partner who were only too happy to take my Member-State-Parliament-Selfie and tell me about his creative response to Brexit. He asked if I had heard of his website and told me about his project to apologise to the rest of Europe via his Art – I’m sure he told me it was a well-known site and that it involved projecting images onto the White Cliffs of Dover, but I was too busy trying to tell him about MY project to remember the details (artists, huh, they’re all so self-absorbed!).

*Alone In Berlin, by Hans Fallada, is one of my Alternative Literary Texts (ALT) (see Reading List in Appendix)

by