Brandeburg Gate, once on the border between East and West Berlin, now in the center of the modern city. This is our honeymoon trip!
In 5 days in Berlin, we used the U-Bahn, the S-Bahn, buses, taxis, Segways AND we walked 50 kilometers. Click for an even larger image.
Back to the Brandeburg Gate, this time with a group of 10 people on a 3-hour tour on Segway. What fun!
Welcoming us to our Airbnb apartment was champagne and "Just Married" tags. How fabulous. Thank you, Nicole! Click to see a larger image.
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This is our home, the modern Sony Center, with offices, apartments, restaurants, an IMAX theater, in the very center of Berlin.
By the Brandenburg Gate, on the former Nazi Foreign Minstry's garden, an amazing Holocaust Memorial, with an incredible display undreground.
Click for an even larger image.
Being a tourist takes a lot of work. Here at rest in the Adlon Hotel on Unten del Linden. Behind us, the Japanes fountain is all that was left of the original Adlon Hotel, where stars used to stay in the 1920's.
This was the bill for two glasses of wine and an espresso, 38 Euros. The wine was good. It was as expensive as in St.Mark's Square in Venice.
It would seem that a lot of the honeymoon is about food. This was breakfast on the roof of the beautiully restored Reichstag.
Former East Berlin's TV tower is in the background. Click for an even larger image.
Inside the Reichstag's glass dome, with 360 degree view of Berlin. All that is left of the old Reichstag is the facade, everything else is glass and steel.
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Top of the Reichstag dome. Click for a larger image.
The Reichstag, Berlin. We are having good weather.
Now in the heart of old East Berlin, an afternoon on the "Museum Island" in the River Spree.
Mashatta Hall in the Pergamon Museum,
a gift from the Ottoman Sultan to the German Emperor.
Market gate from Miletus, Pergamon Museum.
In old East Berlin, a Trabant Museum, showing the old cars, of which more that 3 million were produced, without changes, over a 30 year period.
After all that, a night at the Deutsche Oper, a sol-out performace of Cavaleri Rusticana and Pagliacci.
One of the last sections of the Berlin Wall still standing, now a memorial. Click for an even larger image.
All of the 1961-1989 wall is marked in the road and sidewalk surfaces. Almost 160 kilometers. Click for an even larger image.
Jewish Museum, Berlin. A weird Daniel Liebeskind structure.
With a piece of the Berlin Wall.
Schloss Charlottenburg in Berlin.
Golden ballroom, Charlottenburg Royal Apartments.
An ordinary parking lot in the center of Berlin. This is where Hitler's bunker was located, two blocks south of Unter den Linden. Nothing is left of it. People drive their cars over it, and as the guide of the Segway tour pointed out, also walk their dogs over it. Click for an even larger image.
On Segways at Checkpoint Charlie. Click for a larger image.
Dinner in the revolving restaurant, former East Berlin TV Tower.
Having fun in Berlin. Napoleon took the "Quadriga" from the top of the Brandeburg Gate to Paris (it weighs 5 tons) and installed it in the Louvre. But a few years later, Germans brought it back. Now it is the symbol of Berlin. Click for an even larger image.
Unter den Linden, in front of the Humboldt University. The cathedral and TV tower, where we had dinner last night, in the distance. Click for a larger image.
Berliner Dom, the cathedral. Very new, built 1905, destroyed in WW2 and rebuilt some 30 years later, when East Germans asked West Germans for the funds. We climbed some 280 steps up to the dome for a view of the city.
"Old Museum", 1828. Hitler liked its facade and gave speeches in front of it. In Berlin, you can't escape, on every street corner, in every building, history. Either the Kaiser, or Hitler or the Wall and memorials everywhere. East Berlin is still, 25 years after the Wall was taken down, being rebuilt. It is a forest of cranes and there are holes in the ground everywhere. It will be a fabulous city when they finish building it. We loved it.
