Our first imperative was to get to the Reichstag building by 9.15 to keep our appointed time to have a tour of the seat of German Government.
We left the Hotel at 8.30 and walked the 3km or so to the building situated east of the Brandenburg Gate.
The Reichstag building was constructed to house the Reichstag, parliament of the German Empire.
It was opened in 1894 and housed the Reichstag until 1933, when it was severely damaged in a fire.
After World War II, the building fell into disuse, since the parliament of the German Democratic Republic met in the Palace of the Republic in East Berlin and the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany met in the Bundeshaus in Bonn.
In 1999 after reunification and following renovation including the addition of the dome the building again became the centre of government.
After going through the security measures they have in place we were soon inside and on the roof for a walk through the dome.
This is quite an impressive structure with some quite unique features not the least being a mechanical blind the monitors the position of the sun electronically and
moves around the central column to shade the inside of the debating chamber.
Having completed the tour we then travelled by U-Bahn to Kurfurstendamm for lunch before travelling onto Schloss Charlottenburg a castle some 8kms west of
the city and which had some lovely grounds. For those that have been to the
Palace of Versailles then you don't need to come here as Versailles beats this place hands down.
Leaving there we again took the U-Bahn and travelled to the north west side of the city to The Berlin Wall Memorial at Bernauer Strasse. There a section of the wall
remains in place. One climbs the viewing platform on the other side of the road
and you look down on that section. At the front is the main wall, then the "death strip" and then a smaller back wall. In the corner is a guards tower - so to escape from the east a person would have to scale the small wall, get across the barren land in the middle and scale the outer wall without being seen by the guard.
Many tried, a lot succeeded but too many died in the attempt
All along the sidewalk there are plaques in the ground marking the spot where
someone (in some cases whole families) failed to get across.
The wall finally came down in 1989 after 28 years so the 25th anniversary of its demise is next year - one can only imagine what it must have been like to live in divided Berlin during that period where the citizens awoke one morning to find that they were cut off from family members who lived 100m away and for the period of the wall could communicate mainly by letter!
We leave Berlin tomorrow to continue our journey.
Berlin has been an incredibly interesting city with history in spades and enhanced by the friendliness of the people who live here.
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