Day One - After some harrowing delays, near misses, and very long flights, we finally touched down in Berlin on Christmas Day.

Somehow, we managed to find the bus combination that took us from Tegel Airport to Potzdamer Platz and our home for the trip, the Berlin Marriott.

Next door to the hotel was the amazing Sony Center and local Christmas Markets. 

The site was originally a bustling city center in the early 20th century. After World War II, the area suffered a sharp decline and was eventually left abandoned. As part of a redevelopment effort for the area, the center was constructed. The centre was completed in 2000 at a total cost of €750M.

We did a little shopping and watched the latest James Bond flick (in English) at the Sony Center Cinestar theater.

Christmas decorations at Sony Center

After a very long day, we decided to leave the Christmas Markets of Potzdamer Platz.  We were beat and, after a couple of Bratwursts from a food stand, we headed to bed.

 We woke up early on Friday morning to get ready for our tour guide.

We hired Nigel Dunkley to give us a tour of Berlin, focusing on Cold War and WWII sites. Nigel is a former British soldier and spy and he gave us a great introduction to the city's historical sites.

Berlin's Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor) is a former city gate and one of the main symbols of Berlin. It is located west of the city center at the intersection of Unter den Linden and Ebertstrasse, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. It is the only remaining gate of a series through which one formerly entered Berlin.

 The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It consists of a 4.7 acre site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs. The slabs are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.

 This war memorial was built to honor the Soviet soldiers that fell during World War II. The memorial is constructed as an arch with a bronze soldier on top pf it. The design actually resembles the Brandenburg Gate which is located only 100 yards away.

 The Memorial to the German Resistance is a Berlin memorial and museum. It was opened in 1980 in part of the Bendlerblock, a complex of offices in Stauffenbergstrasse, south of the Tiergarten in western Berlin. It was here that Claus Graf von Stauffenberg and other members of the July 20 plot of 1944 that attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler were executed. 

 The Reichstag was constructed to house the first parliament of the German Empire. It was opened in 1894 and housed the parliament until 1933, when it was severely damaged in a fire. The Nazi Party used this event as casus belli to begin a purge of "traitors" in Berlin and to ban the Communist Party of Germany.

 

The building remained in ruins until the reunification of Germany. After its completion in 1999, it became the meeting place of the modern German parliament, the Bundestag. 

 Memorial to the 96 Reichstag members of the opposition parties killed by the Nazis. 

Then, Nigel took us to lunch.  He took us for Currywurst at the famous political "watering hole", Standige Vertreturg.

The Kaiser William Memorial Church (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche) is located on the Kurfürstendamm. The original church on the site was built in the 1890s. It was badly damaged in a bombing raid in 1943. The damaged spire of the old church has been retained and its ground floor has been made into a memorial hall.

 Nigel attends the new church. It consists of four buildings grouped around the remaining ruins of the old church. The walls of the church are made of  21,292 stained glass inlays.  

The Stalingrad Madonna is displayed here.  It is an image of the Virgin Mary drawn by a German soldier, Kurt Reuber, in 1942 in Stalingrad, during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Next door to our hotel is the site of the Führerbunker; a common name for a complex of subterranean rooms where Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide during World War II.

For five days, we traveled endlessly on buses, taxis, U-bahn trains, S-bahn trains,  regional trains and Trams.

On Saturday morning, we took a long U-bahn train ride to far SW Berlin to the Allied Museum (AlliiertenMuseum). 

 The museum documents the history of the Western powers’ presence in Berlin from 1945 to 1994. Its exhibition includes the world-famous guardhouse from Checkpoint Charlie and many other objects related to the political, military, and everyday history of the city. 

 Documented in David Stafford's "Spies Beneath Berlin", the museum houses a section of the famous Berlin Spy Tunnel. 

This tunnel was a joint operation conducted by the American CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service to tap into landline communication of the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin using a tunnel into the Soviet-occupied zone.

 Then, off to the Berlin Hard Rock Cafe for nachos and t-shirts!

The beautiful and busy Kurfürstendamm, known locally as the Ku'damm, is one of the most famous avenues in Berlin.

We then hopped on local buses to seek out more famous sites.  Luckily, Berlin's public buses include a tourism bus, Bus 100, which runs from Zoologischer Garten in West Berlin to Alexanderplatz, the former heart of East Berlin. On this bus, virtually all the top sights in Berlin Mitte can be seen from the bus or are within easy walking distance from a bus stop at the cheap price of the normal public bus fare. Nifty!

The Victory Column is a famous monument in Berlin to  commemorate war victories.  Berliners call the statue Goldelse, meaning something like "Golden Lizzy".  Others just call the monument "the chick on a stick".

Bullet damage from WWII pock-marks the memorial.

Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom) is an Evangelical Church in Berlin. It is located on Museum Island in the Mitte district, and was built between 1895 and 1905. Dedicated on February 27, 1905, it faces the Lustgarten (a city park) and the former site of the imperial palace, the Stadtschloss.

The Pergamon Museum is among the museums on Museum Island in Berlin. The site was built from 1910 to 1930.

The Pergamon houses original-sized, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus, and the Ishtar Gate, all consisting of parts transported from the original excavation sites. 

Situated just across the River Spree from Berliner Dom is the DDR Museum, which chronicles the lifestyle of the eastern half of Berlin during the Cold War.

 The “Trabi” was almost the only car which ordinary East German people could own.

 Young Pioneers, a children’s organization rather like the Scouts, offered activities, companionship and gifts to children who progressed through its ranks.

 Founded about 1200, the Nikolaiviertel (Nikolai Quarter) is the reconstructed historical heart of Berlin. It is located in the Mitte district, five minutes away from Alexanderplatz.

The Nikolaikirche is the oldest church in Berlin. The church was built between 1220 and 1230. 

Alexanderplatz is a large public square and transport hub in the Mitte district of Berlin. The Alexanderplatz was enlarged as part of the DDR's redevelopment of the city center. It is surrounded by several notable structures including the Fernsehturm (TV Tower), the second tallest structure in Europe.

 Ethan and John fell in love with one of Berliners' favorite foods:  Döner kebab. 

This place was near our hotel and we ate there several times.

Döner kebab (Turkish: döner kebap, literally "turning roast"), is a Turkish national dish made of meat cooked on a vertical spit and sliced off to order.

It is wonderful stuff and gave us a chance to order in German!

 The Topography of Terror is an outdoor museum in Berlin. It is on the site of buildings which were the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS, the principal instruments of repression during the Nazi era. 

Checkpoint Charlie was the name given to a crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie was designated as the single crossing point for foreigners and members of the Allied forces.

On Sunday, we took a sobering tour of the Sachsenhausen concen- tration camp. This was a concentration camp in Germany, operating between 1936 and 1945.

 "Work sets you free"

From 1936 to 1945 it was run by the National Socialist regime in Germany as a camp for mainly political prisoners; from 1945 to spring of 1950 it was run by the Stalinist Soviet occupying forces as "Special Camp No. 7" for mainly political prisoners. 

The boot testing track, where prisoners were forced to run endlessly--usually to their death.

After a sad and emotional day at Sachsenhausen, we headed to the Berliner Dom for an evening service.  We worshipped with Berliners and sang Christmas Carols in German.

This was a nice balance to the horrors we witnessed earlier in the day.

The Soviet War Memorial is a vast war memorial and military cemetery in Berlin's Treptower Park.

Mother Russia mourning her dead.

It was built to commemorate the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April-May 1945. It opened four years after the war ended and served as the central war memorial of East Germany.

Between 1951 and 1989, East Germany's Stasi secret police used this site in Hohenschönhausen as a prison.   Holding mainly political prisoners, it was infamous for its regime of physical and psychological torture meted out to inmates.

Following the construction of the Berlin Wall many attempted escapees were held here. As well as the prison facilities the Stasi also ran other operations on the site, such as a workshop for forgeries.

Bernauer Straße is the location of one of the longest remaining sections of the Berlin Wall.  When Berlin was a divided city, the Berlin Wall ran along this street. This street became famous for escapes from windows of apartment blocks in the eastern part of the city.

The entrances and windows of these houses were successively bricked up by the East Germans and access to the roof was blocked.  By autumn 1961, the last of these houses had been compulsorily emptied and the buildings themselves were then demolished from 1963.

The following are random shots of Berlin.

Ethan and a Smart Car.

John and Ethan in front of the original Checkpoint Charlie security booth.

Ethan by the Spy Tunnel.

Cobblestones mark the location of The Wall, all over Berlin. John's in The East; Ethan in The West.

We spent quite a bit of time in train stations. This is the beautiful Hauptbahnhof station.

Here's the plane that took us back to the U.S., after five great days of "living history" in Berlin.