Berlin

It seems to have become a tradition for Derrick and I to spend the first hour or more in a new country walking in circles looking for the tourist information office. Trust me this is not an intended tradition.

After (finally) finding the tourist information office and buying a map we began our quest for coffee. Doing this after two weeks of five hours or less of sleep and no sleep on the plane ride here, not an ounce of coffee in our systems, and it being early on a Sunday morning...

The rest of the day was a lot easier. We met Connie at the subway station and she gave us a tour of the city while telling us some of the history, interesting facts and personal experiences of the Berlin.

(BTW, Dad, if you find some erroneous spelling errors, there is a fifty percent chance it is not me but the small differences in the key boards. Some slack is appreciated.)

The architecture here is unbelievable, both old and new. Even the apartment buildings are interesting. They form a ring around the block and a courtyard in the center, but then there is another ring with in the courtyard and maybe another
after that.

I unfortunately am not able to upload photos right now, but will later. Trying to describe all the different buildings, churches and monuments would take half a day there are so many styles spanning over different centuries and eras.

We went to the monument to the Jewish killed in the Holocaust. While it was very different than the A Bomb Memorial in Hiroshima it was just as dramatic. Over the area of about one block there are perfectly smooth concrete blocks placed so that they create a grid of narrow paths. Around the outside the blocks are ankle to knee high but quickly go to six feet and higher asyou move inwards. The effect is so that once inside you feel completely isolated, only being able to see down the narrow aisles in front and in back of you and from side to side. Every now and then someone passes through the aisle you are looking down and then quickly disappears, almost like a ghost. If you look up, the walls of the blocks almost look to be looming over you,about to to close together and cut off your view of the sky. Definitely an experience!

By the end of the day I had been awake for a total of 33 hours. Combine that with with two weeks of five hours of less of sleep and I was almost in tears with joy to be going to bed without setting an alarm...

Well sleep in I did! I slept in a whole half hour! Yep, after five and a half hours of sleep I was wide awake. :-/

I guess the bright side of this is that I was ready and out the door to explore Berlin again by 7am.

We went to Potsdam to look at four old Prussian palaces. The first one we came upon was with amazement. The second one had us shaking our heads. By the third one we could not help but say out loud, "you have got to be kidding me." and maybe a few expletives in there too. The best part
is we only viewed the outside of these palaces and their gardens. By garden I mean the area of a football field. I remind you that there were four. We ran out of day to view the insides of these "homes."

We are going to try and circle back to Berlin in order to go to museum or two or perhaps the interior of a palace or two. As for now we are off to Würzburg :-D

Oh. And yes, the food and beer is awesome!