Yes, I know, I’d visited the exhibition last year so what sense is there to see it again? And to drive across the Germany to see it? Or more precisely why would you drive to Berlin when you hadn’t been able to get the ticket for exhibition?

Yes, I was not successfull to “buy” the ticket (they were free) the official way and I refused to pay € 40 + on Ebay for those. Nevertheless, after couple of days of thinking it over I decided to go to Berlin and to spend some time reading or wandering around the exhibition grounds while the others visit the exhibition.

Not all things went us I though, thankfully, which led to a good four-day-long weekend after all. Why happened?

In the end I didn’t have to spend a few hours wandering around the Berlin Arena or drinking beer and eating wurst, as I got to see the exhibition as well (thanks to Moikki, who got me inside through two checkpoints actually).

The tickets we, or the others, to be precise, had were for Thursday evening so we fullfiled our plan on our first day there.

To sum it up – the way the event was organised was far from ideal, I find the FIFO line-up for this kind of event (yet I understand the motives behind it), the number of items on display was lower than last year in Oslo (some were the same, like the Ice Sword of the Other, some were new) and the experience of getting up the Wall provided with the help of Oculus Rift was still amazing (and even though I knew what I was getting into, the brain has been cheated again). I think I enjoyed it even more as I had time to look for details etc. And the fall down after being hit by wildlings, well, it is hard to describe it. Or – have you ever had one of these dreams where you are falling down and wake up just before impact? This is similar, only you a re fully aware at the time.

The rest of our stay was in the name of walking through Berlin to see the “must see” places – Alexander Platz, Holocaust Memorial, but also Hauptbahnhof, KaDeWe etc. – or just to soak the atmosphere of the city (which I find unique). Or Bunte Schokowelt Berlin, a must stop for chocolate lovers, especially if Ritter Sport chocolates are your thing. One could spend a fortune there.

We also stopped to listen to a “sorf-of-a-concert” of classical music in a new building of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche. The new building looks like everything but like a church and I am sure not all will like it, nevertheless I would go to listen to a classical music there again (and this time I wouldn’t calculate the number of glass panes in there, I already did that when waiting).

Among other things we visited Museum of Computer Games, not only that it was just around of the corner from our airbnb room, but we just like to play games (and I scored the second best score in Asteroids there).

What never stops amazing me is the fascination by the Ampelmann – the figure from pedestrian traffic lights. There is company designing products with the figures, but they do not stop at printing it on shirts or bags, there is even pasta in the shape and colour of the said Ampelmann.And no, I didn’t  buy it.