Sheryl’s First Day in Berlin

Knowing that I only had a couple of days to show Berlin to Sheryl, I tried to come up with a plan that took us to a lot of the places I had already seen.

I wanted her first sight to be Brandenburg Gate, when we came out of the Sbahn station. It looked a whole lot different than when I was here a few weeks ago with Cam and Cassidy. All the soccer fan area is gone….you can actually walk through the gate and see down the road to the Victory Column at the end of the Tiergarten..

Brandenburg Gate, you can walk through it now!

We walked to the Jewish Memorial, the Fuhrerbunker and then down to Potsdamer Platz. When I was here a couple of weeks ago, there was a good display about where the Wall was through the city and what they are trying to do with it now (making a long walking trail)…there was also a “soldier” standing there, I had thought that he was just there to answer questions…but for 3 Euros he with stamp you real passport with the official stamps of East and West Germany ….this is one of the main streets that the wall was built, so one side of the street was West Berlin and one side was East Berlin.  The Wall was not in straight line splitting the city into 2, but rather zigzag following streets and the River Spree at times. So we had our passports stamped and he also told us that the path granite blocks embedded in the road where The Wall ran, I didn't know that!.

Then we went to the Topography of Terror again….Sheryl looking at the outside display and I went inside this time….it had more about what the immediate area looked like because this was where are the Nazi ministries were located. We then went to Checkpoint Charlie. By this time it was just about 3 and we stopped for lunch and had a little run in with a bank machine….that didn’t give me my money but then we figured out that I didn’t press the right buttons…it finally did work.

The weather was hot and muggy and it seems like there are double the amount of tourists that there was a couple of weeks ago.

Along Unter den Linden Strasse was next on the list and over to the Berlin Dom and Museum Island, then up into Mitte to show her the stumble blocks. We ended up in Alexanderplatz By this time we were getting tired and took the Ubahn back to Hermsdorf.

I’m glad I’m seeing these things a second time…I’m seeing different details and the streets are now more familiar.  Sheryl has been letting me know basically what she wants to see and letting big sister make up the itinerary for the day. I think we did pretty well for the first day.