Our hotel was located near Alexander Platz, a grim area with concrete and enormous roads but deeper into the city centre we found the cozy buildings, the ones that I imagine thinking of Germany.

We walked a lot, took the trams, trains, subs and buses – I think we were everywhere. I took a lot of pictures but I think this is my favourite. Hundreds of snowmen near the Dom:

Heres from an area where they haven’t removed all scars, the wall, the tower and the fusebox is still there. Lots of people tried to pass this area but failed.

Here is one of the Stasi buildings, this is were the new arrests were taken in and interrogated. An artist once asked people in Berlin what they would like to know about the building – the artist printed their questions onto these signs on the building.

We also visited the ghost stations, Checkpoint Charlie and all the other sites. We had a great guide who could tell us all the details. One of the things that surprised me was that so many of the citizens were members of Stasi, some says each 6th were on Stasi’s payroll – no wonder people got psyked out. They couldn’t trust their neighbor.

Else there were lots of great buildings to see, here is the Berlin Cathedral (Berlin Dom) seen from the DDR Museum, I stitched it together from many shots:

Have you seen a bigger gate than this? This is what the communist leaders would see when they came to Berlin for a visit:

They wanted to tear this down too but so many people live there now so they were denied.

Here is the known TV tower in Berlin, I tried to catch the “God’s Vengeance” but a bit difficult from this angle.

Heres on our way up, I love the drive.

We’ve had a lot of pollution lately and they have measured it to be way above allowed level. It reminds me of China and the olympics, didn’t they do the same?

Have you experienced something like that?

They have initiated free buses but they have too few drivers so the route buses are struggling with delays.. Funny?

They are also reducing speed limits from 80 to 60 and removing lanes so one of them can be used to commuting. I picture long queues tomorrow morning..

The No2 measurements were way above allowed level, this is the last 72 hours:

Music by Visa Röster (feat o2), a remix of Zoids. From Kwed.org

On the society side it has been an ordinary year, I’m an active Red Cross member within the home-visiting-service, been an associate judge for our local district court in many cases where I learn a lot about what happens out there, active in Kiva lending money to exiting people on the other side of the planet. The most exciting thing in 2009 was being part of the mass vaccination as helping personnel from Red Cross. A weird experience.

I’ve had visitors from 160 countries/territories, heres top 10:

1. Norway 40,79 %
2. United States 29,56 %
3. Canada 4,32 %
4. United Kingdom 3,62 %
5. Philippines 1,96 %
6. Sweden 1,78 %
7. Australia 1,45 %
8. Germany 1,30 %
9. India 1,13 %
10. Netherlands 0,83 %

Firefox entered the first place as a reader in 2009!

1. Firefox 49,55 %
2. Internet Explorer 33,36 %
3. Chrome 6,35 %
4. Safari 5,34 %
5. Opera 4,39 %
6. Mozilla 0,57 %
7. Opera Mini 0,12 %
8. Mozilla Compatible Agent 0,11 %
9. Camino 0,05 %
10. SeaMonkey 0,05 %

The top 10 read articles in 2009:

The Pirate Bay case
Ram stuck 6 meter above
Angry drivers
What our heroes from the 80s are doing now
The woman giving birth who weren’t allowed to swear
Windows 7 and Lenovo Thinkpad
Donald toy too dangerous for the airport
TV2 driver who broke the law to show us that people breaks the law
Skipping the H1N1 queue
The old mill

A strange selection of articles but that is life in the blogosphere.

More weird stuff to come though, I like to write about anything that interest me, I hope you’ll keep visiting me. Happy new year and thanks for stopping by!