For you Nic!!

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Since I didn't write that much about Berlin thought I'd add a bit of a PS especially for you. Berlin seems a very vibrant city and would appear - at least on the surface - to have come to terms with its past. A free city walking tour which we joined during our own wanders gave us some excellent little tit-bits of history and life for Berliners. The girl - Annabel - who led the group was Australian (of course!!) and from Perth. It was a job she'd been doing for the past two years and, she told me, she just loves living in Berlin despite the bitter cold winters.
It is posible, when walking around what was East Berlin, to get some idea of life under communism. The ugly concrete apartments, the trams which only seem to run in that area, the type of sculptures etc - also, at least around Alexanderplatz, there seems to be more rubbish around. The area still looks a bit poorer than where we were staying. But there are also some big Western hotels around Alexanderplatz however underneath an overhead railway line I doubt that much has changed since the Cold War days - it looks particularly grotty and depressing. But on a summers day, with boatloads of tourists cruising on the River Spree Berlin gives off a carefree air. I was very impressed with the display of photographs - a mini history lesson - in the Reichstag glass dome which seemed to well cover Berlins dark days as well as Berlin's glory days. But as I said we've only really had one full day of exploration. Not quite as many map-readers as in Paris but there certainly were many tourists around!!

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Photos

Once the pride of East Berlin
- gradually being dismantled. Right next door to where the Royal Palace used to be and which was blown up by the East Berlin authorities during the Cold War.