On the first morning we wandered out of our hotel, along the road and came to a huge field of concrete blocks. It took us a little while to , realise that this was the holocaust memorial, but when we understood, the symbolism of the blocks became clear. Hundreds and hundreds of featureless tomb-like rectangles representing the hundreds of thousands - millions of ordinary people killed by the nazis just because they were jews. From outside the memorial is saddening, and when you follow any of the passageways between the stones and descend into the middle, where the ground drops and the blocks tower around you, it becomes very disturbing indeed.
We left the memorial quietly, deeply affected and over the following days we visited many powerful reminders of the horrors that took place during WW2. But if you visit Berlin, you also see vibrant, modern and optimistic city. It really is a city of contrasts where you can feel shock and elation, view desolation and beauty, experience living history and look forward to a bright dynamic future all within a few hours
At the top of Ebertstrasse, we came to the Brandenburg Gate, which we thought had a grander name than appearance. It looked better from behind, with all the clowns and touts mucking about. The next pictures were taken along Unter Den Linden. There was a lot of restoration and repair work going on, but I felt it just added to the experience. Look at the screens used to cover up the repair work. They're good to look at. If you were really brave you could pay to sit and freeze while being driven along Unter Den Linden in a horse drawn carriage..
The next stop was Museum Island, where we didn't visit any of the museums because there were long queues at them all. We did visit the Berliner Dom which is an extremely beautiful working church. The statue on the bottom left was just near by and she's thinking 'When are all these tourists going to go away?'. Further along the river bank, we saw these bronze bathers. We saw some like this in Singapore, too. At the end of a long day we headed back to the hotel and on the way passed Checkpoint Charlie. There's not much to see but it's very popular with tourists.
