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Published: August 6th 2012
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Berlin is a crazy place, so much to see and do. After checking into our hotel/apartment and flipping through our lonely planet quickly, we decided to go to Alexanderplatz on our first night to see if anything was happening. We arrived to a fun carnival type thing and decided to stay, grab some food and check out a couple of the shows. It started to rain and get windy so we headed back to the train station and within a meter of the door and a crack of thunder, the rain came down hard! As we took the train to the next stop with a bunch of wet people, it looked like we were riding through a car wash, not being able to see anything through the windows. When the train came to a stop, no one really wanted to get off but we took off running to the nearest piece of shelter. It really just kept getting worse and worse and the people gathering under the tin shelter was growing as the rain and hail came down hard. It was funny to watch the trains come in and people running as fast as they could into the trains and out
of the trains, crashing into each other. When it finally let up, we ran to the other end of the platform to get the next train and then went to the walmart-type store by our hotel to get breakfast for the morning.
The next day we went to check out the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, Unter Den Linden, the memorial to the murdered European Jews, Potsdamer platz, the Sony Center, and the former site of Hitler’s Bunker. The memorial was really cool with a bunch of different sized cement pillars that you walked through, although I’m sure it should have been a bit more somber, I couldn’t help but join the kids trying to lose their parents in the maze by trying to zig and zag to lose Binnson (unsuccessfully...). Later we went back to Alexanderplatz for the world clock and TV tower and ended the night back at the carnival with a lango and a fire show.
The tourist office at Hauptbahnhof circled a couple of places on the map for us to check out on the weekend, when we arrived at the first place, we were greeted by thousands of people swarming Karl-Mark-Allee at the International Beer
Festival. It was a massive trail filled with bars on wheels and food stands that spanned the length of 3 different train stops, I tested out a couple glasses of cherry and banana beer while Binnson got some food before heading off to our originally planned sights. Our next stop was to the East Side Gallery, the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin wall. We walked the full length of it, taking pictures of the graffiti and getting our souvenir passport stamp along the way. We went to see Kurfurstendamn next but unfortunately the church was under construction and fully covered by scaffolding when we got there. However, when we got there we arrived to another festival- summerfest! So we were happily distracted by the yummy potato pancakes and the city night marathon going on there before going to the Olympic stadium for a couple of pictures. As it was getting dark outside we decided to hit up beer fest again. SO many people and so much fun!
We took a day trip out to Potsdam on our final day in Berlin. It was only a short train ride away and we spent the day walking around the main
tourist squares and the many palaces and palace gardens. Even though we have seen a gazillion palaces since we arrived in Europe, they are still cool to go see... but we are getting a little Schloss-ed out. Next we are headed to Hamburg.
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MOM
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Missing you
Got home today. Pretty soon - you too will be getting ready to return home as well. Hope the last part of your trip goes well. Love love the stories and the pictures. Good job! Lots of people are following you. Stay safe. Can't wait to come visit and see all your treasures and pictures. Love Mom, Dad and Jeff