Berlin- the Traditional tour

Snapshot
Where- Berlin
Weather - wet then overcast 18°C
Steps - 16500 or 10.5km

Bit of a wet start to the day but only as we were catching the bus into the city. Today was the traditional tour on the HOHO bus checking out the main sights such as The Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, Siegessäule (victory column), plus a couple of war time / cold war sights like Checkoint Charlie and the Memorial for the Jewish Holocaust.

The Reichstag was bombed and almost totally destroyed in the war but you wouldn't know it today. I couldn't work out why the victory column had some pieces missing from the relief work like a head or leg removed from a soldier but then we saw the bullet holes in the marble and in the reliefs and realised that is why they were removed.

Checkpoint Charlie was the place where people could pass from the west to the east. You could get your passport stamped but of course there is a cost associated with that. (In Europe there is a cost associated with everything - even costs you 50 € cents to use the toilet)

The Memorial to the Jewish Holocaust was rather unusual with 2711 concrete columns of various heights arranged in narrow alleyways. Not sure how this was meant to represent murdered Jews because we didn't go into the museum to find out, but it looked interesting anyway.

This ends our trip to Berlin - probably one more day we could have looked at another few things but I think we hit the main points. Off to Copenhagen tomorrow.En savoir plus