We're back from Berlin! What a great trip it was. I think that every high school student should take a trip there when they learn about the Iron Curtain in history class. It definitely brings it all together and helps to understand what really went on there! We arrived on Saturday morning, and went to work at the Christmas Markets! Germany is famous for its Christmas Markets and that's one of the biggest reasons we chose this time of year to go there. What a great choice it was! The Christmas Markets were fantastic! They had wonderful food---we sampled Bratwurst and beers, Pretzels and mulled wine...We ate and drank our way from one end of the city to the other! The crafts were fantastic, but like everywhere else you had to watch out for the cheaper stands as many of there wares donned the "Made in China" stamp! We started at the Alexanderplatz and worked our way back to the hotel going from market to market...just what Mike loves---watching me shop! That night we were both so tired from shopping and walking the city that we had a lovely dinner in our hotel restaurant, Mike had a Wienerschnitzel and I played it safe with a steak. I just was too tired to play games with food I wasn't sure about! On Sunday we took an all day (8 hour) walking tour of the city. Preston, our tour guide was an American from Oregon who was living in Berlin doing his master's in Modern German History. While his humor was a little questionable, we couldn't have picked a better tourguide for Mike and I. I guess you could call our tour "semi-private" as only Mike and I and one other Australian couple showed up for it. Our guide was really knowledgable, and like I said the whole experience really gave us some insight into how East and West Berlin were set up, how they interacted, how the Berlin Wall had two walls, with a death zone in the middle. We learned that the "New" synagogue actually survived the Nazi occupation and WW2 thanks to 1 man. Berlin is an interesting city. It is actuall 64 thousand million Euro in debt ($64 billion). Their city slogan is "Berlin--Poor but Sexy" and you can really see just how poor the city is. World War 2 ended over 60 years ago, and you can still see the destruction the allied forces caused. The city just doesn't have the funds to repair everything. There are empty, vacant lots all over the city, where they just can't afford to rebuild anything. Fronts of building that were blown away, have stayed blown away, just the rubble has been cleared. I think this is one of the reason why we liked this city so much. This was a city in Europe that actually had something to see. There were no fabricated tourist traps as in other cities we've been to. There was SO much to see that a weekend just wasn't enough. We're looking forward to going back in the Spring/Summer timeframe. We also got to see the square in which they burned the books in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade---today there's an ice skating rink on it--we had a beer there! We learned how families that were separated by the wall interacted--those on the West side, were able to obtain 1 day visas, and were able to visit their family in East Berlin for one day--the only catch was that the visas could only be obtained every 2-5 years. One this that really interested in us was that 80% of anything to see in the city is in East Berlin. I saw where Katarina Witt was given an apartment in East Berlin after winning her figure skating medals for E. Germany---the apartment stands on the lot where Hitler's bunker was. We got to see the hotel (Hotel Adlon) where Michael Jackson dangled his new son over the balcony all those years ago. I really could go on an on about the things we saw, and realy all the things we want to go back and see! I'll stop here though!
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