We headed for Berlin on the train on Saturday morning after the boys left for home. It was about a 4 hour ride through some beautiful countryside - quite a bit of it the former Eastern part of Germany.
Here´s a couple of pictures of the beautiful green fields; we believe the yellow is Canola
Nice rolling hills with little towns nestled in
Really beautiful country!!
Berlin was extremely easy to get around in. The streets were well-marked and we had a good map. We found the S Bahn and took it to our motel which was in the former Western part.
The next morning we got up and took the S Bahn back to the Central Train Station and left our luggage in lockers. Then we started walking. The first sight was the Reichstag. This is the building that Hitler burned in 1933 as a "Pearl Harbor" to get the German people behind him. He blamed it on the Communists. It was not used again until after the Wall came down and then it was rebuilt and the large dome added. It´s the equivalent of our House of Representatives.
This memorial was right close to the Reichstag and is to those brave souls who tried to escape from East Berlin and were killed - some tried to swim, and some tried to climb the wall and fences.
Here is the Brandenburg Gate - lots of history and significance to this gate. It was one of many that surrounded the city and when the wall was put up, it was not used at all. Now it´s a symbol for all German's that they are reunited. Very impressive. Napoleon, when he conquered Germany, took this gate to France - it was brought back to Germany (can´t remember the dates right now), but it really has a lot of history.
This next sight we saw, was very interesting. It´s actually a memorial from the German people to the Jewish nation in memory of the Holocaust. It´s quite large - large stones - many, many of them - you can walk down the rows and they get larger and larger. Here´s a couple of pictures
We then started walking toward Checkpoint Charlie. I know you´ve all heard of that. It was actually taken down after the wall came down, but rebuilt again as a memorial. Along the way we found some of the wall still standing.
Checkpoint Charlie - here it is. There is a large picture with an American Soldier looking into the East and a Germany Solder looking into the West. Interesting!
This sign was facing the East Germans
Here´s a preserved piece of the wall with Sam standing on it, so you can get a perception of the size
We left Berlin on an overnight train. Very interesting as we woke up about 6:00 a.m. and we weren´t moving!! Hmmm - we were on the ferry taking us over to Sweden!! I´ll add pictures of our sleeper in the next post!
