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Published: June 26th 2017
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Stawberries for Sale
This strawberry kiosk was open in front of an office building near our hotel in Berlin. Geo: 52.5235, 13.4115
For our first full day in Berlin we decided to see the sights related to WWII. Many of them are within walking distance of the hotel so I planned a loop to walk around. We started going south from the hotel to start the morning at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. It is entirely outdoors with displays about the history on a wall surrounding a courtyard with more displays. Inside the courtyard are two authentic pieces of the wall and more photographs on display. After reading all about what happened at Checkpoint Charlie and the people who attempted, successfully or unsuccessfully, to cross from East to West, we walked west toward the Topographie des Terrors and the Berlin Wall Monument. There were more displays about the Cold War and lots of stories about what the people did to support each side. One story was about a book that schoolchildren had to read about an American family and how bad they were.
From there we turned back north and walked by the Holocaust Memorial on the way to Brandenburger Tor, Brandenburg Gate. After a photo stop, we turned and headed back east on Unter den Lindenstrasse. It was the wide shopping
Checkpoint Charlie
Photo from the sixties when Checkpoint Charlie was in use. This was at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. boulevard lined with Linden trees that Hitler took over for his military parades. He had all the trees removed so there would be plenty of room to show off the troops, tanks, and all. Later, the trees were replanted and now it is a lovely wide city boulevard rivaling the Champs-Élysées. We looked for a restaurant for lunch, but only saw hotel restaurants.
We were back to our hotel without lunch and remembered the chocolate cafe. It came highly recommended on several travel sites, so I knew that I wanted to eat there. They had a very short menu, so Philip and I ordered the two items on the specials board. He had pasta with a beef sauce infused with chocolate, and I had tomato soup with mozzarella sprinkled with chocolate. They both were good, if just a little odd. The meal came with bread which also had chocolate in it. Then we saw the dessert menu--so many choices. Philip had the eiskaffee, a drink with coffee and bourbon vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate. I had the Mousse au Chocolat-Törtchen, a chocolate mousse on a chocolate cookie covered with more chocolate and topped with a gold flake. Mine was
Don't Walk
The Ampelmann don't walk sign delicious. Philip said his wasn't that great.
After our long walk and still thinking about all the horrors we had read about at the WWII sites, we decided to rest both body and soul for a while in the hotel. The walking is harder than I expected as is the viewing of the tragedy's happening in Berlin while I was growing up safely and happily in the USA. Well, I really didn't know how well I would hold up on the trip, but I wanted to be able to walk better than I actually did. It was frustrating some. Philip and I both read our email before going out for dinner at another restaurant across from the hotel at the Gendarmenmarkt. From there we had another view of the Deutscher Dom which we can also see out our hotel window.
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