Posted by Rainer Brockerhoff (away):
News from Königs-Wusterhausen, a small suburb of Berlin. We decided to stay here at very comfortable and not-too-pricey hotel, and commute into Berlin by rail – it takes about 50 minutes. A whole-day ticket covers both the commute and any metro, rail or bus travel within Berlin itself. There’s even a network company that offers Internet access, though they open late and close early – at least from our point of view. In terms of friendliness to tourists, the Berliners take the prize so far – and of course I can understand what they’re saying, which is a big plus. 😉

Turns out this was a good choice. Berlin is huge and the largest city we’ve seen so far in terms of attractions, too. It would take two weeks to see less than half of what’s in the guidebook, so we’re just taking some samples. Yesterday we went to see Checkpoint Charlie, the Jewish Museum (which turned out to be so huge that we stayed for 5 hours!), the Brandenburger Gate, and some adjacent parks and shops. We also saw a couple of iMax films which turned out to be excellent – one about Australia and one about underwater reefs.

Today we’re supposed to see the Berlin Wall Memorial, the Berliner Dom and the area around the Kurfürstendamm, including the Memorial Church. Whew. Sorry, no time to chase up links for any of these… then the next day we’ll drive off to Düsseldorf for the big family meet. On our way out we may drive through some of the outlying parks. Stay tuned!