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Published: September 6th 2006
After Prague we headed to back into Germany and its reborn capital Berlin, but not before driving through very 'interesting' and 'amusing' sites near the Czech / German border - back were the garden gnomes and brothels.
We were really looking forward to Berlin, and I was especially curious as my last visit was in 1989 about 5 months before the Berlin Wall came down. I was expecting it to have changed, but not sure to what extent.
There were no campsites near the city centre so we stayed out near Potsdam on a very large lake surrounded by a very large park, so plenty of places to unwind and relax when not sightseeing (I know I can hear you all saying 'I think you have already done enough of that'). It was also a great site, with loads of great shady trees, to keep us cool, but it was a bit dusty.
Berlin itself was an amazing city and we loved it. The old East Berlin part (which I was scared off from going into last time) was where all the best historic sights were. This had been claimed by the Russians when they were dividing up
Checkpoint Charlie
The old Checkpoint Charlie where the US Sector and East German border stood. Last time I saw this all the buildings in the back ground didn't exist, instead was a no-mans land area between the walls before the old east Berlin startedthe city between Russia, USA, UK and France after the war (fair enough as it was actually Russia that liberated Berlin from the Germans in the final days of the war).
We went to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum at the site of the famous old border crossing which has a great history of the wall both pre, during and post divided Berlin. Of course it shows the events that lead to the downfall and opening up of the wall to make Berlin one united city again.
We hopped onto a 4 hour walking tour of Berlin on one of the hottest days of the trip so far, which despite being hard work in such heat, was definately the way to see the city.
In all we spent about 4 nights in and around Berlin. We had planned to meet my dad and family in Berlin but they got delayed leaving the UK so instead of waiting around for them to arrive we decided to start the drive back towards the UK and meet up on the way for a few days.
For a couple of nights in Berlin we had a Japanese family set up right
next to us (I am talking so close you couldn't walk between the tents). Whilst that was a bit annoying as there was loads of space about, the funniest part was that when we saw this family we initially thought it was just a couple. They had a 2 man tent and we had only seen the husband and wife. Then not long later 3 kids came along and it was clear that they were all together. We figured that the kids must be sleeping in the people mover they were driving, but no, come sleep time all 5 piled themselves into the tent for the night. We do not know how they all got in there, and had visions of them having some sort of racking system or something to sleep one on top of the other, but no the last one in just ran at the tent and slept where they landed !!!!
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