A Grand Tour Part 8 - Berlin

The bus kept on rolling and while we were chatting and laughing away, or just relaxing - even dozing, our faithful and hardworking Juri kept the bus safely on our track. What a guy! The journey was by now well into the final two stages of a great tour. We arrived in Berlin late in the afternoon as the sun was setting in the West. But there was sufficient light for us to absorb some of the former East Berlin sights which included our first sighting of the now defunct Berlin Wall. This brought home to us how things have changed for the better with that monstrous 'iniquity' now effectively an 'antiquity'! Graffiti now adorns those parts of the Berlin Wall still standing and where people have expressed their feelings in creative ways:






After a long day on the road, we were glad to see the welcome sign at Hotel Berlin. Even then, we chose to go for a short walk after dinner before retiring for the night.


Near the hotel was this sculpture that was a bit of a puzzle to most of us. Not to Carol who worked out that three of the intertwining 'arms' (links) represented the three allied partners - Britain, America & France, and the one pointing away represented the Soviet zone.

The following morning saw us on our Berlin tour and our first stop was to have a closer look at the Berlin Wall. It gives one an eerie feeling, particularly when I looked down a fairly lengthy part of that wall with a lonely cyclist pedalling along:


This part of the Wall was very near to the Gestapo/SS buildings as well as Goering's Aviation Office, now a Finance Office. Many of the buildings have been restored and show some of their former glory, including this type of decoration:






From here we went to the famous Brandenburg Gate near the houses of Parliament. A very busy place which obviously has a lot of history and meaning for the German people. Certainly, it is a focal point.







More sobering is the memorial across the road from the Brandenburg Gate as we observed crosses placed for those who attempted to escape from East to West Berlin, but who didn't make it.
Then there was this expansive memorial to the Jews who died in the Holocaust. A simple, but moving reminder of the bad days of World War II:
Finally, we checked out 'Check-point Charlie' and passed through both the Russian and Western Allied checkpoints. Have to admit that it all felt a little unreal:


In the afternoon we chose to go off by ourselves and wandered around the Berlin Shops, but also visited the Friedrich Wilhelm Memorial Church only part of which survived the bombing. We went inside and were amazed by the mosaics on the ceiling. Took several rather good photos, but only post the following (This chapter is getting rather long):
In the old church we came across a special memorial made of nails from Coventry Cathedral to encourage reconcilliation.
We also went into the new church which is very modern. Herewith a view of the two contrasting buildings:
By now we were pretty-well pooped out and chose to let someone else do the pedalling for us. Yes, a Velo-taxi is just the ticket and a great way to finish our own Berlin sight-seeing:
In the evening we went to dinner near Check-point Charlie and found this great looking Mini Cooper. Anyone knowing Carol would probably think that she did all this herself in cross-stitch.I think she would have loved to parcel it up and take it back to Hobart!
After dinner we were taken for a look over Berlin from the TV Tower. But enough! It was good to visit this historic city. Auf wiedersehen Berlin!