Berlin - Day 2

We left the apartment about 9am and walked up the road to Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, where we saw the old damaged tower and the new church. It's made of concrete with blue stained glass. There's also a new tower, but it's being renovated.

We then walked up through Tiergarten park, which has lots of trees in autumn colours. There are also lakes, rivers and many statues.

We got to the Siegessäule Tower (Victory Column) in the middle of the park and paid to climb to the top of it where the views were great.

We then walked up the riverbank at the north of the park for a bit, then through the streets to the Berlin wall memorial. We didn't have time to do it justice, so we resolved to come back some other time and caught a tram to Mauerpark.

There is a flea market there every Sunday, with lots of junk, craft and food stalls. We bought some Gluwein, walked around for a bit then bought some Turkish toasted sandwiches for lunch.

Scott bought some pick and mix licorice.

After this we went over and watched a modern violin player performing.

We then caught the tram back to the main station, and walked to the Reichstag. We were a bit early for our pre-booked entry so we walked over to a Soviet war memorial from the Battle of Berlin.

We'd booked entry to the dome of the Reichstag at 2pm.

After going through security we were escorted up to the dome and got our audio guides. We then wandered around the roof and up the dome for a while, it was quite spectacular.

Later we walked down to the Brandenburg gate, which had an art installation of 3 upended busses in front of it.

We walked in eastern Berlin for a while, seeing Checkpoint Charlie which is a bit of a tacky tourist attraction.

The red/green man on many traffic lights in Berlin (Ampelmann) is a different design from usual, and has become an emblem of the city. It even has shops selling merchandise of it.

We then went for a coffee because it was cold.

After this we walked to the Topography of Terror exhibition, which we found very moving. It described the Nazi actions in Germany before and during the war. We tagged on to a very good tour guide for a bit. We then caught the U-Bahn back to the apartment.

After a beer we went out for dinner at Dicke Wirtin, a traditional German restaurant. We shared a weiner sausage to start, then Scott had roast pork and Shirley had beef goulash. Both were very good.