Berlin

My last trip overseas was to Australia and New Zealand and I have forgotten how much more difficult travel can be when there is a language barrier.

'Wa breah ya wan dat on, yeah?'

'Pardon?'

'Da breah. Wot one?'

Buying a Subway sandwich is a difficult process at the best of times. On average there are 27 decisions to be made as you make your way along the production line. The bread, the filling, the salad, the topping, the size. The permutations are almost limitless. You could create a different sandwich every day for 7 years and 66 days before having to repeat yourself. When the spotty youth asking the questions is doing so in a thick, Scouse accent the difficult becomes the impossible.

Through a combination of sign language and random Yes and No statements I eventually emerged with two 6 inch subs for my son and I that were not that far off from what I actually wanted.

The flight to Berlin was short, just 2 hours, and uneventful. We had flown with Easyjet, which meant the airport we landed at was miles from Berlin itself. Fortunately, the efficient German trains soon had us where we needed to be and we found our hostel.

In Germany, unlike England, the accent is very much on the 'Youth' in Youth Hostel. The average occupant appeared to be about 15 as large, noisy school parties dominated the building.

Our dormitory held 12 people, mostly around 19 to 20 years old.

Backpacking in Australia I learned that there is no point being bashful in the dorms. After all we are all men together. On the first morning I stepped out of the shower wrapped in a towel, rummaged around for clean underwear and threw off the towel with a manly flourish before slipping into my Y fronts. It was only when I got round to putting my contact lenses in to cure my blurry vision that I noticed that there was something different about this dorm. What I had taken to be some very long haired men in the next bunk were actually pretty young girls from France. It seems that dormitories are mixed in Germany. Oops!

Berlin is a city of contradictions. It is not somewhere automatically associated with liberalism, but nonetheless it has freedoms to match the likes of Amsterdam. You can possess up to 10g of weed, be naked anywhere you want and even have sex in public places. But dare to jay walk and you risk and instant 10 euro fine. Whole hours are wasted waiting for the green man to appear.

Not just any green man though. This is Apelman. He is a welcome remnant of East Berlin. The green figure has a jaunty hat and an obvious appeal to young children as he steps out gaily. The red figure has his arms spread out wide. His stance is that of a flasher, appealing to the children in a far less welcome manner.

Apelman is a cult figure. Entire shops are devoted to him where you can buy T shirts, mugs, backpacks etc adorned by the red or green figures.

You don't have to spend long on foot in Berlin to realise that you are a second class citizen. The cyclists are the ruling class. Most pavements have a section devoted to bikes. If you wander into it you can guarantee that one of the two wheeled bastards will sneak up silently from behind and scare the shit out of you.

The public buildings are dominated by the most warlike collection of statues I have ever seen. They typically depict well muscled men and women crushing snakes or riding on lions. The message is clear - We are Germans. Screw with us and you will die.

Take for example the well known figure in the chariot on top of the Brandenburg gate. Originally it was called Quadriga, a triumphal goddess of peace, bearing aloft an olive branch. In 1806, when Berlin was conquered by the French, Napoleon had the statue removed and taken to Paris. It was eventually restored to its rightful place in 1814, after Napoleon fell from power. The olive branch, however, was replaced with what we see today - a very menacing iron cross, complete with a savage eagle. The Germans also renamed the figure in the chariot - Victoria.

Look closely at the statue and her gaze appears to be focussed on the French Embassy, one of the main buildings in Pariser Platz, the square in front of the gate. Equally bizarely, the French Embassy, which was built after World War II to replace the bombed out earlier version, resembles a fortified bunker. The lower story has a facade that looks like it is made of sandbags with regular gaps for the people inside to shoot through.

All this aggressive posturing comes at a price. Nearly 70% of Berlin was destroyed in World War II. Nearly every building that survives from the war bears the scars of it. Not far from the hostel my son and I stay at is the Tiergarten - a huge park in the west of the city. Although there hundreds of trees there, none of them are more than 65 years old as the park was plowed up during the war and given over to food production. As the Soviets made their final assault on Berlin in April, 1945 the Tiergarten became a battlefield. Walking around it today it is easy to spot the many bullet holes and shrapnel damage on the various statues that inhabit the park.

Berlin is a place of history. The jewel in the crown of the Third Reich. It reminds me of the lesson I learned about the German people when I was in Munich. That no matter how painful their past maybe they have thrown their doors open to the world and do not try to hide it. More than that they are determined to overcome it.

Take for example Hitler's bunker. This huge complex lay 15 metres beneath Berlin. This is the place where Hitler died on 30th April 1945, along with Eva Braun, who he had married only hours earlier. The Soviets were only 500 metres away and Hitler accepted that he had lost the war.

Having witnessed what the Italian people had done to the body of Mussolini by cutting off his penis and hanging him upside down in public, Hitler ordered that his body be burned once he was dead.

His staff carried out his final wish and then abandoned the bunker. When the Russians arrived a few hours later they realised the significance of the smouldering body. Dental records proved it to be Hitler and he was buried in a secret location. Years later the Soviets exhumed the body, carried out further tests to confirm it was Hitler and allegedly threw his remains in a river.

The bunker itself was blown up by the Russians, although its remains still exist, buried beneath Berlin.

Today this historically important site is as bland and unremarkable as it can be. It is a car park, littered with dog excrement and overlooked by some very ugly flats from the communist era. In 2006, at the time of the World Cup, a small information board was errected. No one wants to to remember Hitler and the Germans have ensured that the neo-nazis of today have nowhere to create a shrine.

My son and I visited the site of the bunker during a very interesting Third Reich tour. Our guide, Ben, is a young historian from south west England. For over three hours he never lost my attention once as we toured the historical sites of Berlin. He even reveals the answer to the question he is asked the most - did Hitler only have one ball?

Although Austrian by birth, an error by the recruiting officer authorised Hitler's application to join the German army at the start of World War I. He became a messenger - a very dangerous role with a high level of mortality. Hitler was severely wounded and yes, he lost a testicle when he was hit by shrapnel.