Day 23-24: Berlin

We left Lubeck late on Monday morning to travel to Berlin and arrived around 14:30. With a couple of transfers on the local transit system, we arrived at our apartment for the week. IT IS HUGE...at least in comparison to the accommodations that we have stayed at previously on this trip. There is a living room (the size of the whole apartment in Lubeck), decent kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, and the place has at least 12-foot ceilings. It was a very welcome surprise and we wasted no time getting settled in, even unpacking out clothes for the first time on the trip.

We hit up the grocery store and spent the night in, relishing our first internet connection in 3-days time and getting caught up on e-mails and news.

On Tuesday we got a bit of a late start and didn't get out on our run until 10am. We walked to what we thought was a nearby park (Volkspark Friedrichshain, for those who know Berlin) as a warmup, but it was actually about 2km away. Whoops. Anyhow, we ran our 6km and walked back to the apartment. Embarrassingly enough, we didn't get out into Berlin until 12:30.

We walked into a bustling part of the city, about 15 minutes away, and grabbed a sandwich from a food stand. We then met up with a Berlin Walking Tour. The tour guide, Torben, took us on an introductory walk of Berlin to shed light on the history of the city and the many landmarks. Much of Berlin was destroyed during WWII, so many of the buildings have been rebuilt (modeled on the originals) or are just plain new. The tour was 4 hours and gave us a great foundation for the rest of our time in Berlin. Here are some of the pics that we took (and therefore, places that we visited) along the way:

* Berlin Cathedral

*Columns outside the Old National Gallery

*Statues along a bridge

*Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (consists of 2,711 stone pillars...the number of pillars has no significance and visitors are supposed to derive their own meaning)

*A remaining piece of the Berlin wall with an illustration depicting a famous photograph of an East German border guard jumping the barbed wire fence during the construction of the wall

*Ampelmännchen (German for "little traffic light man") is the symbolic person shown on traffic lights in East Germany. He is a beloved symbol and a popular Berlin souvenir item.

*Gendarmenmarkt - a popular square in Berlin that is bounded by twin churches and a concert hall

We finished the evening with dinner at a local eatery - Lemongrass - and enjoyed delicious Vietnamese food. More from Berlin coming soon (from Daryl) :)