Today Mrs. Thiermeier, Brigita and I went over to east berlin to check out the famous Gärten der Welt (Gardens of the World).
The drive there took about an hour. After arriving we parked in a narrow parking lot on the side of the gardens and went in. The entry fee was pretty inexpensive, only 3 euros a person.
The Gardens are basically a giant park with thousands of flowers. In addition to just being a park though, there are several houses and courts build to give it an international feel. It had an arabian house, a korean temple, a japanese garden, a chinese garden and several pagodas. They also had a fairy-tale forest (where they have statues featuring characters from famous german fairy tales), as well as a hedge labyrinth. Below are some pics:
Main Entrance
Arabian House
Courtyard in Arabian House
Flowers in Balinese Greenhouse
Balinese Greenhouse
Korean House
Zen Garden (Japanese House)
Chinese Tea House, Boat, and Pagoda
As you can see, the gardens really are quite something. The whole thing was actually funded by the city of Berlin's government in conjunction with thegovernments of the foreign countries represented, i.e. a public park, not private. I was amazed that the government puts that much money just into places for leisure such as this. Of course, from the perspective of tourism, this would be a great draw for Berlin - however something to consider is that it's way off of the normal tourist track, so my guess is that it really was intended for the Berlin citizens.
Anyways, while we were walking around in the beginning (after seeing the arabian, balinese, and korean houses), we stopped at the cafe in the middle of the park to get something to drink. Mrs. Thiermeier also got a slice of a strawberry apricot cake that was quite delicious. After that we headed over to the japanese and chinese houses.
Behind the chinese house, there was a small pagoda (not the one in the picture) where they served food. To my delight, I saw that they had a type of chinese dumpling that I really like, called Bao zi（包子）. I ordered a couple as a late afternoon snack. Mrs. Thiermeier and Brigita both got plates of fried noodles.
After that, it was starting to get late, so we headed back to the house for the evening.
