Day 12-13: Destination Berlin

We got up at 4.00 am Helsinki time to get organised and get to the airport for an early flight. The hotel kindly set us a breakfast table and had an array of croissants ready for us. Flight to Copenhagen, then to Hamburg and then to Frankfurt was quite tiring. At Frankfurt we got our new car and drove 4.5 hours to Berlin. Forgotten how crazy the freeways are....we pretty much stayed in the slow lane, unless overtaking, and we got up to 145km per hour. All too often cars flew past us like we were standing still. Crazy speeds. Sushi for dinner, Independence Day in German on the TV, a few beers and then we fell asleep exhausted.

After a slow start this morning we put some plans together and headed out. First stop was the Kaiser Wilhelm church as it was close to where we are staying. Read that the 100 bus travels from there to Alexanderplatz so we jumped on and got of at the German Parliament Building (Reichstag). It was a majestic, big building. The sun was belting down at this point and we were really starting to feel it. Walked a few hundred meters to the Brandenburg Gate. A lot of it was blocked off and you couldn't get through. Looked like it was being set up for a concert. However, it was still pretty amazing...especially when you saw pictures of how it looked at the end of the war. Walked around to the memorial for The Murdered Jews of Europe. It was spread out over a large area and consisted of varying sized concrete rectangles. Stopped for some lunch...we made fresh rolls...yum...in a shady spot...got lucky as there were not a lot of places to hide from the sun.
Nourished we headed to a section of the Berlin Wall and the Topography of Terror Documentation Centre. This was a very interesting indoor/outdoor museum on the former site of the Gestapo and SS Headquarters. It was quite eerie to see the wall and read accounts of how it split families. Continued on the Checkpoint  Charlie. This was the name the allies gave the crossing between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. Not much to see really...though I noticed a KFC sign dominates the area...but the history of the place was significant.
Walked another couple of kms to the Gendarmenmarkt and the French and German Churches. Both churches are on opposite sides of the square and seem to be identical. I overheard a tour guide say the French built there's first and the German's copied it exactly...except they made there's a touch bigger. After this I was done. Heat and sore leg got the better of me. We bused back to the Wilhelm church and walked home to recover....it is still hot.
Tomorrow we plan to drive to and explore the Potsdam area.