Our train from Frankfurt pulled into Berlin's massive new central station at 4:30pm. We connected on the new U55 line to the Brandenburg Gate and walked the few blocks to our hotel, the excellent Berlin Marriott. After a leisurely turnaround there we metroed across town to the southwest corner of Tiergarten park where we bought some supplies, ate dinner and joined the Saturday night crowd at the bar for drinks at the Hard Rock Cafe. Before heading back to our hotel for the night, we snapped some night shots of the Kaiser Wilhelm church (first picture below).

Berlin Wall - East Side Gallery - many small people...

Kaiser Wilhelm church old/new

Sachsenhausen gate

Sachsenhausen walls

Sachsenhausen memorial

Returning to Berlin in the afternoon on the S1, we connected across town to the Ostbahnhof station and walked toward the river to visit the East Side Gallery. The East Side Gallery is the longest remaining piece of the Berlin Wall, decorated after the fall of the Wall in 1989 by various artists in themes of freedom and unity. It's been restored several times since then. For some reason this is not a major tourist spot - even hard to find on the web, but for me it was a highlight of the city just as it was 12 years ago. We walked its whole mile length (large picture top of page right and first two pictures below). My sense is that Berliners want to forget it ever existed and the relatively few younger people who have heard of it don't really understand what it was and what it stood for. In some spots in Berlin, but not all, there's a brick marking line in the pavement where the Wall once stood. There were actually two walls, one inside the other (third picture below), that defined a no-man's land that had to be crossed under fire to escape. Returning to our hotel around sunset, we took the short walk to the newly marked spot of Hitler's bunker (fourth picture below). The location, which is now just a parking lot in front of an apartment building, had never been marked until 2006 because of fears that it would become a lightning rod for neo-fascists.

Berlin Wall East Side Gallery

Mary Mackey's panel

Front & back walls

Hitler's Bunker site

After a late breakfast at the hotel we walked east through the "Topography of Terrors", which is both a short remaining section of the Berlin Wall and the site of the infamous SS headquarters during World War 2 (first picture below). Continuing a few blocks farther east we visited the Checkpoint Charlie Museum (second picture below), which while crowded, was worthwhile. Most of the exhibits have to do with the ingenious ways people escaped to West Berlin. We walked back to the Reichstag, but seing the long line to enter the Dome (third picture below), we decided to come back in the evening when the line might be shorter (it wasn't). After a short stop at the new and unique outdoor Holocaust Memorial (fourth picture below), we metroed and then hiked over to Museum Island.

Topography of Terrors

Checkpoint Charlie

Reichstag facade mid-day

Holocaust Memorial

Museum Island is a concentrated area with five of Berlin's most notable museums situated between the River Spree and Kupfergraben. We bought an all-museum pass and started with the Bode Museum, which was supposed to house the massive Egyptian collection - but it didn't. Leaving the Bode after a short visit, we walked across the bridge for what turned out to be a terrible lunch at a nearby outdoor cafe, then headed back across the river to the Neues Museum, which did hold the extensive and well organized Egyptian collection. Regrettably, they didn't allow pictures in the room with the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti, which dates from 1345BC. We spent quite a while in the Neues museum and by the time we left we both felt all "museumed out", so we didn't visit the rest of the museums on the island. Instead, we hiked to the Berliner Dom (first picture below) for a quick visit and then over to the Radio Tower. The line to get to the top was hours long, so we decided to punt on that and metroed back to our hotel for a snack and some drinks. Switching our camera gear to tripods and night shot lenses, we walked to the Reichstag around sunset where the line for the Dome was at least as long as it was earlier (second picture below). It took an hour and a quarter in line, but we both agreed that our visit to this architecturally unique dome was very worthwhile (third and fourth pictures below and large picture top of page left). We ended the evening with a late dinner near our hotel and then packed for our train to Prague the next day.

Berliner Dom interior

Reichstag Dome line at sunset

Reichstag Dome top level

Reichstag Dome spiral