As it happens, we're a 40 minute train ride outside the city of Berlin and it's a cold day, 50 degrees, with rain and wind. But we have our umbrellas and are determined to make the best of it. Not knowing any better, we failed to validate our train tickets which we later learned carries a $60 fine for each one. Luckily no one came through on a random check though the next day our (now validated) tickets were checked by the conductor.
The plan today is to go to Museum Island to see several art museums which will be closed on Monday. But first, on this very chily and wet morning, we're off to the Brandenburg Gate...
...where we found and joined a free two hour walking tour led by Louis, a friendly and animated young man from Northern Ireland. Here he is telling us about the repurposed marble in this train station which earlier was the floor of Adolph Hitler's office.
And under this innocuous parking lot is the remains of Hitler's Bunker where he ands Eva Braun committed suicide as the Russian troops approached and entered Berlin...
The Holocaust Memorial is bleak and disconcetingly maze-like and is a frighteningly easy place to get disoriented and lost...
It commemorates the lost Jews with blocks of stone that equal the number of books in the Talmud...
A sobering vista
This replica of Checkpoint Charlie shows us something of what it was like when the Berlin Wall separated Berlin into East and West starting in 1961. But the guards are definitely too friendly!
Parts of the Wall are still standing--left to remind the world of what it looked like...
and what it represented...
For a change of pace after a sobering day, a young man at Starbucks, (everyone's favorite place for coffee, wi-fi and phone charging) recommended this crazy place for dinner--a birch forest majoring in margaritas and burgers!
We were served by a very tattooed and talkative waitress who didn't mind at all posing for a photo with Rick...
By then, we had walked about 23,000 steps according to Rick's fit bit so it was time to go back to the hotel and bed!!!
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