The Berlin TV Tower

The Berlin TV Tower (Fernsehturm) is the center point of Berlin. This golf ball look-alike is stuck on a 365 metre tall stick planted in Alexanderplatz. It features a 360 degree view of the Divided City at 204 metres.

Some interesting facts about the Space Needle of Berlin:
- It was built in 1964 and took 4 years to build
- It is sometimes referred to as the Telespargel, "tele-asparagus", by East-German journalists
- Bloggers (apparently) have begun referring to this tower as Death Star from Star Wars (I like golf ball on a stick personally)
- When the sun shines brightly on the observatory, the glass reflection appears as a cross. This phenomenon is referred to as the Pope's Revenge because the communist government suppressed the church during its atheist regime

Technically we saw this on the second day, but seeing as our Monday arrival was darkened by the rising moon, it was really the first thing we saw. Two elevators take observers up to 204 metres. People then proceed to press their noses against down-slanted pains of glass for views of the intricate labyrinth of Berlin's infrastructure. Most all buildings worth their weight in tourist attraction can be viewed from the tower and if you don't have the eye to find them, maps along the railing clearly point them out in German, English, and French.

The tower also offers a cafe hovering a mere 3 metres higher, a gift shop by the toilets, and a bar for the husbands who were quite clearly dragged there by their busy-body wives. Fog covered the city during our visit so extremely distant sights where hidden from our optic nerves, but non the less, the view was spectacular. The city layout is nothing of a grid-block American city. Buildings are rounded to fit the winding streets and nothing is shorter than 5 stories. Tourists also get to view the milling-about fellow tourists down on the court area in front of the tower. Besides the view, the largest attraction to the TV Tower is the location of a Starbucks in its base(my personal favorite because Denmark lacks the existence of the five-dollar coffee wonder we call Starbucks).