Lots of photos…

Reichstag - the Nazi's used a fire here as an excuse to declare an emergency state, leading to Hitler's dictatorship

Reichstag

Sightseeing with luggage

Sightseeing with luggage (2)

Checkpoint Charlie (former boarder crossing)

Ha ha

You are leaving the American Sector

Checkpoint Charlie

Berlin Wall 1961-1989

Where the wall used to be

Old East Berlin style cars are now trendy

Portion of the Berlin Wall

Portion of the Berlin Wall

Walk

Don't walk!

Where are we?

Pretty street lamp

Berliner Dom (cathedral)

Robin on our boat ride

A museum and TV tower

Berliner Dom

Schloss Charlottenburg (fancy palace)

Alonna and cousin Jessica

Robin

German Tapas - delicious!

Modern Postdamer Platz

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

You can walk through it

The memorial was huge

Brandenburg Gate, built in the 1600's

Napolean took this to Paris, but Berlin got it back

Used to be part of the wall's dead zone

Comfort food - Starbuck's vanilla latte

Comfort food - coke with ICE

 

We spent 5 nights with our friend Dave from Boise, who moved to Germany a year ago with his family.  They live in a cute small town in the country 20 minutes outside of Munich, called Pfaffenhofen.  It was so nice to stay in their home and they were such great hosts!  We stayed in their guest room, hung out with Dave, Kristin and their two cute kids, and Dave cooked great meals every night.

Munich

We spent a day in Munich walking through the town and sightseeing.  It’s a big city and was heavily bombed in WWII, but they’ve restored a lot of the old buildings.

We also enjoyed visiting a huge park called Englischer Garten. There’s a really cool spot where there’s a permanent wave in a canal, and surfers continuously hop out onto it, surf back and forth a few times, and then fall into the water and swim to shore. It’s really fun to watch. After that we found a nice bench near a waterfall and read books for a couple hours. Ahh, this is the life!

Dachau

Another day we visited the Dachau concentration camp. This was one of the first camps that the Nazi’s created and and the longest in use – from 1933 to 1945. It was initially a prison for political prisoners, but later was used for all the groups the Nazi’s didn’t like (Roma, Jews, homosexuals, etc). It wasn’t an extermination camp (like Auschwitz in Poland), but over 25,000 people died from disease, starvation, beatings, execution and suicide. It was quite an experience to visit the site.  The theme at the Dachau memorial is “Never Again”.

Oktoberfest

On a lighter note… Ben and I happened to be in Munich during the annual beer festival, Oktoberfest. It’s a huge carnival complete with roller coasters and cotton candy, but the main attraction is the beer.  Here’s how it works: you choose one of the many beer tents, squeeze into a spot on a long picnic table with Germans and other visitors, and wait for the beer maid to bring you a huge 1-liter stein of beer. At least half of the people are dressed in traditional German outfits (I loved the dresses and wished I had one!). A band plays occasionally, and apparently later in the day things get pretty crazy. We went in the morning with Dave and Eric (another friend of Dave’s from Boise), so it was a relatively mild experience, but good enough for us. Ben and I shared two beers, ribs and apple strudel. It was great!

Today we left Berlin and just arrived in Prague… more on those later.