DAYS 35-36 Berlin Germany

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Today was our last full day with the tour with another long but more comfortable 7 hr train journey to Berlin. After a quick check-in to the Moxy Hotel for a 2 night stay we headed straight out for an orientation walk around the huge city. We covered some of the main attractions included the Brandenburg Gate the Reichstag (parliament), remnants of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and Berlin Cathedral but to be honest not that exciting compared to some of the smaller cities we have been over the last few weeks. The city has also been under continuous reconstruction for decades.

We ha a final group dinner at a Bavarian style brewery pub.

Next day was hot again. Not knowing what we wanted to do & having to navigate the S Bahn & U Bahn systems we set out early, by Berlin standards, to museum Island, an area near the old city that is home to 5 outstanding museums. We chose a highlights guided walk through the Pergamon museum. The Pergamon Museum houses monumental reconstructed buildings from the remains of early archeological expeditions. The most striking of these reconstructions is the Ishtar Gate & processional way leading to the Tower of Babylon while the Market Gate of Miletus was reconstructed from the mostly intact ruins from an earthquake & found in current day Turkey.

Another museum visited was the Neues (new) museum home to an ancient Egyptian collection & the famous bust of Nefertiti. Late afternoon we topped off a great day in Berlin and wandered to the East Side Gallery an outdoor art gallery of murals painted on the longest-remaining section of the Berlin Wall but now a trendy graffiti culture area. We watched the setting sun, beer in hand, listening to an Irish busker before walking to the edgier Kreuzberg area for dinner where the average age of the hordes of the people on the street must have been mid 20’s.

Tomorrow we fly to Annecy France for a gathering of Ruth’s UK family.

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Photos

Reconstructed tile decorations from fragments
almost all the blue bricks are modern reproductions

Peace dove breaking down the wall
Original 1990 mural touched up twice since

Original 1990 mural without any restoration since
Original 1990 mural touched up twice since