The Adventures of JAHLON: BERLIN

Saturday morning we boarded another train and headed to Berlin. This time, we had reserved a private family car, so we were much less stressed. But when we arrived, there were two other families in our box...four adults and three kids. There are six seats in a box. The whole train was packed, and there was no way I could let those people stand in the isle the whole trip. (Not that they would understand me anyway, they were all Czech.) So we all scrunched up together in the family box. It was tight, but about an hour into the trip they had all gotten off at other stops and we were all alone again.

The train station was enormous in Berlin! It was much more confusing than Prague, and so was the train schedule! We had a tough time figuring out the automatic ticket machines and getting on the right train, but eventually we did it.

Mahlon has always wanted to stay at a hostel. According to Rick Steves, Berlin is the hostel capital of the world and this is one of the best there is. So I booked East Seven. I wasn't crazy about staying in a hostel, but it cost less than half of any of the rest of the hotels we stayed in, so va bene!

Tiniest. Room. Ever.

No AC. Bathroom down the hall.

I have to say though, it was very nice and clean. I don't know if I'd do it again with Dexter, but it turned out to be ok.

Once we got checked in, can you guess where we headed first? If you guessed Hard Rock, you're right!

Our hotel was very close to the TV tower. We learned something cool about it on our tour the next day. Read the history and about the "Pope's Revenge" here!

Hard Rock was a good hike away, all the way across town. But we found it!

There was a wait so we visited the gift shop next door. There are a lot of bears for sale in Berlin.

Each shop has its own bear like this too. They're all painted a different way.

And you can buy a piece of the wall too. They say if you put all the pieces of wall that were sold over the years as souvenirs together you'd have a lot more walls than they started out with.

When we woke up Sunday morning, Dexter's fever was gone! Hooray! He had a great day too. He was a perfectly behaved little boy! (Well, most of the day anyway.)

We had one whole day to spend in Berlin, and there couldn't have been any better way to spend it than on this tour. It was a 4-hour walking tour and we had a fantastic guide! The funny thing about Berlin is, they have a history they don't want to immortalize with statues and landmark signs. So even though the city has such a big important history, you can't easily find anything about it. Our guide, Ashleigh, was brilliant! She gave us hundreds of years worth of information and was funny too!

This is the University where Albert Einstein taught. He left just in time, before Jews started being taken away to camps.

This is the library, the site where the biggest book burning took place. The university across the street now sells used books out front every day, rain or shine.

Here's the Brandenburg Gate, the site of the biggest party in the world after WWII was over. There's an embassy for each of the allied countries in this square, and most importantly....

...the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled a baby from the balcony.

We spent some time at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

This is the site of Hitler's bunker. It's a parking lot now for an apartment building, and there is only a small sign to show for it. Ashleigh told us the story of the suicide pact he made with Eva Braun before they married in the bunker, and then poisoned their dog and themselves.

Here's the same site from the other side of the street.

The Berlin marathon was happening that day, and we avoided it most of the time by ducking through the subway tunnels underneath. There was one time, though, where we had to run across through the runners.

Here's a big socialist propaganda painting showing all the happy, blonde haired/blue eyed children of socialist society.

This is the Gestapo Headquarters building:

And finally...the wall. It's so puny looking. Our guide reminded us though, that there were two walls built parallel to each other, but several feet apart and with barbed wire in the middle. And the guards shot anyone who attempted to pass through. It was virtually impossible to escape. But we learned about a few people who did!