Walking around Berlin

This morning we met our tour guide and other participants outside Starbucks in Pariser Platz by the Brandenburg Gate for the 3 hr tour of Berlin, a tour that lasted 4 hours.

You will recall that Michael Jackson famously held one of his children out of a hotel


window -well that was this hotel on the Platz.

Around the corner is a sombre monument to the victims of the holocaust consisting of some 2711 odd sized blocks set out in rows. The varying heights symbolise the stacking of bodies in graves. We walked through the maze of blocks and it did really make one think of the atrocities committed on the Jewish people





From there we went to a barren car parking area under which it is said that Hitler holed up in his last days before committing suicide - the bunker has been filled in with concrete so that there would be no memorial to that sadistic individual


Onwards we went to stand near one of the last remaining lengths of the infamous


Berlin Wall - the above photo is taken from the western side of the wall.


Along the road you could follow the direction of the wall as the bottom stones had been left in situ. Following the wall in the direction above led directly to Checkpoint


Charlie which has been retained the way it was during the cold war period when East Berliners were unable to travel freely to the west. It has to be said however that the area is rather naff as it is too touristy.

We then moved through Mitte to Gendarmenmarkt which is dominated by two almost identical churches, one the Franz Dom and the other the Deutscher Dom, either side of the Konzerthaus (Concert House)








On Unter den Linden, the street regarded as the cultural centre of Berlin, is part of


Humboldt University and also Neue Wache which is another reminder of the victims


of war and violence. The building has a single statue above which is an oculus








Crossing onto Museum Island we looked directly towards the modern being the


Television tower and the old, the Berliner Dom being of baroque style


The tour ended here so we made our way to a Starbucks to determine what we would do for the remainder of the day and to refresh.

We "trudged" to look at a piece of more modern Berlin at Potsdam Platz where


there are buildings of the modern generation then we jumped a train to


Wittenbergplatz where there is the impressive department store Kaufhaus Des Westens, the largest department store in Continental Europe with some 60,000 sq m of space set over 6 floors and containing all the well known high class brands.

There is a winter garden restaurant on the top floor and that is where we supped tonight before returning by train to our hotel.

Another superb day in a superb city!