Berlin, Germany
Berlin ended up being one of our favorite stops of the trip. In the right half of this picture you can see what is left of a WWII bombed building. Years ago squatters moved in and set up shops and cafes. The government was going to force them to move out if they could not make the building "livable." An international effort raised the needed money, and today one can go into the building and climb the empty floors until you get to a bar or cafe. It is also a place where a lot of art is produced. The whole complex is called the Tacheles Art Center.
Since the wall came down in 1989, Berlin has undertaken massive rebuilding efforts. Buildings such as the one in the above picture will not look the way they do today for very long. The city is being modernized and cleaned up. While this is a good thing, the charm of old Berlin is fading fast. Tour guides say that if you want to get an idea as to the old Berlin, get there soon.
The historical and impressive Reichstag.
A section of the Berlin wall that was not torn down, but ravaged by tourists eager to chip out a piece for themselves. Now this section is put behind bars so it will not get any worse.
These pink pipes are all over the city. Berlin's water table is causes a problem when construction is taking place. So these pipes pump the water out of such sites and into another area. It was kind of fun to see the juxtaposition of these gaudy pipes with beautiful buildings.
We went on a wonderful 8-hour walking tour for an unbelievably cheap 10 Euro. We HIGHLY recommend the Brewer's Best tour to anyone visiting Berlin. At the end of the day, a bunch of us from the tour, including the tour guide, saw some Dixie land jazz in the hot, crowded, smoky basement of a Berlin bar. It was a memorable night.
This is part of the longest remaining section of the Berlin wall which extends for 1.3 km. It was resurfaced a few years ago and people were somehow chosen to be allowed to paint a portion of it. Notice the many cranes dotting the skyline that are repairing the bombed-out buildings, and building new ones in some of the still-vacant lots.
This is a memorial that is in some of the remains of Nazi headquarters at Prinz-Albert-Strasse. We took an audio-guide tour of it and it was pretty amazing. It was surreal to imagine what went on in this basement that was notorious for torturous questioning tactics. The building itself was where much of the Nazi's final solution was planned.