Back in Berlin

Day 38

Up and out in the dark this morning in time to grab a quick breakfast at the station before our train to Berlin. 

The trip is just under 2hrs, much of which is through rolling, productive farming land interspersed with blocks of trees (birch trunks showing their best winter white and conifers of varying kinds) before you enter the outskirts of Berlin. We passed a number of solar farms and wind generators and the delightful allotment gardens which we took to calling Hobbit Houses on our last trip.  Apologies for the quality of some of todays photos - taken out a dirty window of a train going at 100+km/hr and this is the best I can manage.

his solar farm was huge!

Our apartment is in a big apartment block (that also houses the Berlin Curryworst Museum !!) within a stones throw of Checkpoint Charlie and just a couple of hundred metres from the Stadmittre U-bahn station so getting there from the main station was a piece of cake.  Finding the actual apartment door in a huge complex – eeer not so easy but we made it in the end. 

We have a ground floor apartment with a terrace

Because the bed goes from wall to wall we have his & hers doors

Unpacked and out for a walk and some lunch.  Salad rolls & coffee at a bakery then down to check out Checkpoint Charlie.  We’d walked past it last time we were in Berlin in 2013 as part of a walking tour we took – it seems they have added a lot more historical info about the wall in a large outdoor display since we were here with Lauren. We read our way round the display just to refresh our memory and took another picture of us standing in both East & West Berlin.

Tony wanted to explore Pariser Platz and the area round the Brandenburg Gate so we headed in that direction passing the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on the way.  I only needed this one photo to say it all. 

From there it was round the corner to the Reichstag for a quick look and as it was really cold this afternoon and someone forgot to be wearing thermals (not me!) we headed back along Freidrichstrasse to the flat.

We did however, make a stop at the Ampelmann shop.  For those who don't know Ampelmann he's the little green man who lets you cross the road... and he has become a Berlin icon.  You can get all manner of souvenirs in his shop - the usual t'shirts, sweatshirts, magnets, umbrellas but Ampelmann gummi-bears was a surprise.

It’s lovely to be back in Berlin – I can’t put my finger on why we really liked it the first time but it’s there again.  Looking forward to the next 4 days and a few of the things we missed seeing last time.