Ich bin ein Ostberliner!

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Or, perhaps, eine Ostberlinerin. (I can do the grating Boston accent, too, y'all know I can.)

We have a spectacular studio apartment on Linienstraße in East, yes East, Berlin. Words cannot even describe how cool it is to be in the East and how ridiculously normal a place it is. The proprietors are Rick-approved and we're pretty sure he has steered us well.

Today we took the IC from Bahnhof Altona in Hamburg to Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten in Berlin, a little over 2 hours. Bf. Altona is definitely the way to go if you want a seat on this train. Poor folks who got on at the Hauptbahnhof or later were wedged, standing, in the corridors and stairways the entire time. We added insult to injury by leaving our reserved seats empty while we sipped kaffee in the dining car... oops. 😉

No matter how light I pack, it's always too heavy. But train station lockers work wonderfully as advertised, so the only major schlepping is from one home base to another.

We visited the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, Brandenburger Tor and Pariser Platz today. The latter were an emotional experience for Drea, who (in spite of living only 2 hours away) has not visited since the fall of the Wall. Today, where once there were antitank mines and armed East German guards, you can now look through the Gate and see... a Starbucks and a billboard for Windows XP. I said it's as if Seattle itself liberated the East. 😉 We also had a nice lunch/dinner on the Unter den Linden and managed to avoid a major rain shower.

No firm plans for tomorrow, but Wall-related sights are tops on the list.

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Photos

Brandenburger Tor, mit Starbucks
View of the Brandenburg Gate through the window of the Pariser Platz Starbucks. Everything you see here used to be the "death strip" no-man's land around the Berlin Wall. Progress!

Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas
(Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe) This brand-new and somewhat controversial memorial is a vast field of stele which can be walked through. Toward the center, the path drops down steeply and the stones tower overhead.

Pension sweet pension
The apartment building where we're staying, near Haeckescher Markt in the former East Berlin.