September 1, 2013

Today is Sunday; we arrived in Berlin on Friday. It was a 45-minute drive from Potsdam.  Initial impressions have been favorable. It is a city of about 3.5 million.  It is modern, with tall buildings and wide streets.  There are lots of shops and the people on the street seem more prosperous than some other places we have visited.  Unlike, some cities, Berlin offered many hotels in our price range.  We chose the Regent because of its location in the “mitte” of Berlin so we can walk everywhere because Berlin is really spread out compared to other European cities.  On Saturday we walked 4 hours!  We saw the Dom, which is an evangelical Lutheran cathedral. It was damaged by a firebomb in WW II, but has been rebuilt.  We visited the Brandenburg Gate, a well-known city landmark that was formerly a gate to the city, but was isolated and hard to visit until the Wall was demolished in 1989.  We also visited a revived area of the city known as Potsdamer Plaza, which has skyscrapers, multinational corporations and luxury hotels. On our walk back to the hotel, we saw Checkpoint Charlie, a Berlin Wall crossing point between East and West Germany during the Cold War and which has also seen its share of real life and Hollywood spy exchanges. Last night, we went out to eat at Borchardt’s, it specializes in wiener schnitzel.  Rita was shocked when they brought her one and it covered the entire plate!

Norm and Rita

Berlin, Germany, great city to walk and take in the sights.

Französische Friedrichstadtkirche The French Cathedral

The German Cathedral

This Opera House is in between these Cathdrals.

The Dom of Berlin

Beautiful Alter – Evangelical – Protestant

The organs here are amazing.

The interior of the dome

These are in the four corners of the church

You can see the edge of the previous picture here above the pulpit. This view is from the upstairs balcony.

Brandenburg Gate

These people were trying to get ANYONE to join them just for ONE MINUTE of exercise just outside of Brandenburg Gate

There must have been something in the air this day, we saw about 10 of these during the day. They are bicycling these  – no motors.

But only saw this one with the Lederhosen on all of the guys.

Must be another wedding, and we’ve seen tons of bridesmaids.

These are the NEW HIP outfits for Octoberfest. We are thinking of getting an outfit since these look so updated!!

The Holocaust Memorial

Different view of the Holocaust Memorial

Check Point Charlie