A Great Day In Berlin

        What a day of adventure. - Berlin. The day was warm and sunny.  We were up very early and finished breakfast quickly. We had an early meeting for our tour. During breakfast and when I went to get tea and coffee the lack of people milling about was noticeable. When I got back to our room, I check the tickets which we had ready the night before. We were not suppose to meet at 7:30 but rather at 6:45. The later time was from the tour we missed. We were 25 minutes late. We did the 100 or so steps down in record time. We got to the Princess theatre and the tour people said that we had missed it! Then they said 'just joking'. However we were the last 2 to enter the theatre! We waited for 10 minutes and then we all left. So no lines and no waiting for about 45 minutes! I guess it worked out. We were off to the bused for the short ride to the train station. It was a bit disorganized with 600 or more people all going to the same place. They had a “private” train just for the Princess people. The train ride took about 2 hrs 30 minutes. We arrived at the Zoo train station which is in the very centre of Berlin before 11.

The Church

Brandenberg Gate

              Bobby was our tour guide and he was excellent. He was German but sounded British but his language was very clear. You could understand everything he said. Our first stop was the Allied museum at the former American sector HQ. They had a nice display on the Berlin airlift along with a British plane actually used in the airlift. A French troop train was also on display. The museum highlighted the U.S. efforts in the divided Berlin immediately after the war. There was a short section of the Berlin Wall, a Soviet wall watch tower and a building that previously was at Checkpoint Charlie.

At The Gate

Reichstag

 After a drive through an exclusive big homes area of Berlin, the next stop was lunch at a downtown 5 star hotel. It was an excellent full meal that everyone at out table seemed to enjoy. We headed for the Brandenburg Gate at the very centre of the city passing the Kaiser Wilhelm church which is bombed out and has been left a memorial of the destruction from WW2. A photo visit to the Reichstag and then crossing into what was East Berlin followed. The area near the gate was in the Soviet sector and had many of the historical buildings of Berlin. The buildings are slowly being restored and should be completed by 2020. We visited the place where the Nazi book burning took place, the university and a war memorial. The buildings that the Soviets build were very 'Stalinist” in style. Finally we headed to the location of Checkpoint Charlie. Only 1 small building remains. Throughout the city there is a stone pathway that

Berlin Wall

marks the actual location of wall. We were constantly crossing from East to West Berlin. The portion of the wall has a wonderful history of the Nazi rule. Is is on the grounds of the ing and SS headquarters. Only 1 building remains from the Nazi government. You can still see the marks from bullets on many of the old buildings in this area. The wall is lower than the one in Dublin separating the 2 sides there but there was a wide no man's land on the East side and gun watch towers. In all it was everything you might think it would be. We saw where Hitler had his bunker but it was blown up by the Soviets, filled in and apartments built over the site. Nothing remains of that bunker.

Checkpoint Charlie

      Finally we drove around the centre of Berlin viewing other buildings and getting a sense of what a wonderful city we visited. By around 4:30 we headed back to the train station and by 5 pm we were on our way back to Hamburg. They did provide a small light snack on the way back. We arrived at 7:30 and had finally made our way back to the ship by after 8. We were just to tired from the long day to go to dinner. We ended up having something light and calling it a night. A light sea day tomorrow after leaving Hamburg after midnight.