Day 7

Today we slept in until 10am. Still trying to adjust to the time change. The plan today was to do a Rick Steves walking tour around Berlin. This is a guy that spent ⅓ of his life touring around Europe and documenting it. It can be a little nerdy but it has a lot of good information. Before we started that we came across a guy selling tickets to a 2 hour hop on and hop off bus tour. This was a narrated tour which showed us most of the sites around Berlin, so much history. It was raining so a covered bus sounded good.

About 3/4 of the way through the bus tour the rained stopped. The bus took us by portions of the Berlin Wall that was still standing (only 1% still remains). There is a row of bricks that mark the place where the wall once stood, zigzagging down streets and across sidewalks through the city. They are very conscious of their history and recognize it where appropriate.

Some of the highlights were: the Jewish Memorial which is the site where the book burning took place across from Humboldt University library. The Murdered Jews of Europe Memorial consisting of 2711 Coffin shaped pillars covering a city block, no two are the same. The Brandenburg Gate which is the German version of the Arc de Triumph in Paris and is where Reagan famously said Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall. Hitlers Bunker where he and his wife (of two months) committed suicide. There is a gravel parking lot on the site now because they don’t want to memorialize him. We then walked down Unter den Linden which means under the Linden trees. This street ends at the Brandenburg Gate. The Nazi Party cut down all of these historical trees and lined the street with Nazi banners. Interesting fact-Hitler is quoted for saying “If I tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it people will eventually come to believe it”.

We then visited the spot where the book burning occurred. It was in the middle square that was right in front of a very large library. It was done there on purpose. The memorial is a 3ft x 3ft glass window on the spot and as you look down into the window you see an empty room with empty bookshelves on all 4 walls. So much history!

We made several pit stops for wine, cake, beer, cake, wine/coffee, cake, cake, cake. After that we decided to get some pizza and head back to the hotel. My watched died along the way so I don’t have an official step count but I will guess 50k+.

Tomorrow we travel to Nuremberg.