This weekend, I was able to convince my co-worker to take a trip to Berlin. Even though I had been there before, it was good to go back with another set of eyes.
Without a GPS, it is easy to get turned around in a big city. We were following the signs to the Zentrum (center of the city), but I guess I missed one of them. We ended up taking a driving tour of the city, but eventually ended up at the Brandenberg Gate - but not where I had intended. We started our tour by walking north to the Brandenberg Gate. On the way, we passed the holocaust memorial, which consists over 2700 pillars of different heights.
We went to the Reichstag, only to find the line was still long (were all those people still in line from the last trip?). We (again) didn't want to wait, so we passed through the gate. I was tempted to stop at the US Embassy and say Hi. Perhaps next time.
On both sides of the gate were people protesting against fur, animals, or something. They were self-controlled, and stayed behind their own barricade. There was apparently an agriculture ministers' conference that day. It seems there is always someone protesting something there. They can protest now - 20 years before they would have been arrested.
We decided to take the hike to Checkpoint Charlie. It was much easier to find this time, since we didn't take a short cut (hah). Another big line at the museum, so we pressed onward. This time we were watching the time, since we had only paid for 4 hours of parking (6 Euro!) on the street. By the way, if you park on the street, you are supposed to go to a kiosk and pay for parking, then put the slip on your dash. I'm not sure what happens if you don't pay, but we didn't want to find out.
On the way, we passed an interesting building (?) that seemed to be made completely of scaffolding. I couldn't see anything solid inside it - no concrete forms - just scaffolding. See if you can figure it out.
We drove to the East Side Gallery (where the section of the wall remains). Much easier than the train, and no walking back.
Remember what I said about not having a GPS? Leaving the city with the Avis map (and not much else) was, shall I say, difficult. The key was to watch for signs that gave us a direction to follow. The first such sign pointed us toward Dresden. Knowing that Dresden is in the same general direction as Leipzig, and that there are highways that circle the city, we should run into one of the rings. Eventually? Adventurers that we were, when we stopped seeing signs for familiar places, and convinced that the outer circle was still expanding as we drove, I saw a sign for Dresden that turned down a different road. After several kilometers on a dark road, we decided that this was not such a good idea, so we turned back. Eventually, we saw the elusive Dresden sign. It took us over an hour to reach the outer ring. We didn't stop until we reached the correct highway.
We did stop for dinner at Sam Kullman's diner. I guess we were missing food from home. Good hamburgers and Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Yum.
