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A rather hectic drive on the freeways to Berlin: trucks and high speed cars made it a bit of an adventure. Found the hotel relatively easily, (Berlin is not Paris, but that is another story!) though parking was an issue as we had to move the car because of a market on Sat. Hotel close to the U-Bahn station and a few stops from the main attractions. Good to stop & have time to sort & repack.
May 11 We found our way to the Brandenburg gate which is impressive, a busy precinct with tourists, buskers, gypsies, and fun ways to get around: horse & carriage, rickshaws, strange multi seated bikes and Trabi safaris.
Walked around, into the Tiergarten, to the Holocaust memorial, past the Riechstag, had an icecream then down Unter den Linden to the Museum of German history ( Deutches Historisches museum) which is a very fine chronology of German history until 1918.
Because of the rain we ate in a city arcade created by putting a clever glass roof over the road between 2 narrow streets. Berlin has a lot of modern buildings as well as the (mostly rebuilt) older ones.
Got back in
time to move the car which became quite an effort as parking was at a premium and we had to work out the many regulations. The Saturday market in the square opposite was worth it. We love markets!
Berlin has some wonderful museums with lots of amazing things 'acquired' from the ancient world. The Pergamon museum is mind boggling, with it's Babylonian gate and Greek temple set up Inside the building. The Neues Museum has some wonderful items as well, including a lot of Egyptian items and the bust of Nefertiti, which is quite exquisite. She was a beautiful woman. And of course, photography was verboten.
We also enjoyed the DDR Museum about life under communism and the Checkpoint Charlie museum which is focussed on the many attempts made to cross the Berlin Wall.
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