Berlin, Germany

Finally, on our fourth stop in Germany, my German started to resurrect itself. This was good, because we soon found ourselves in a lodging crisis due to a big soccer game scheduled for the same weekend. The tourist office at the Ostbahnhof was unable to help us, as was the main tourist office near Zoo Station. That left us one alternative: the phone. I dialed all of the hotels in the guidebook and, using my fractured German, managed to secure a room at the last place on the list. While not quite as run-down as our room in Barçelona, it was no great value, either, and there was no mystery as to why this was the last room available in the city.

Being well rested from our overnight train ride, we immediately hit the streets on a walking tour. "Insider Tours" boasts native English speakers for guides, and our Australian leader took us on a march over what seemed to be the entire city. We met near Zoo Station (Zoologischer Garten) and trekked through the Tiergarten, past the zoo, and on to the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, Museumsinsel, and finally to a conclusion at Marx-Engels-Platz where our guide gave us a very evocative account of the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent reunification of the city. Our tour, initially listed at three hours, had gone to over four and a half, but we were never bored. Tired and footsore, but not bored.

After a post-tour nap and laundry at the hotel we were back out to find dinner. This we accomplished at Zur Letzten Instanz, in the former East Berlin. Established in 1621, Berlin's oldest restaurant serves hearty foods and delicious beer to locals. The place is definitely off the tourist track, but the staff and fellow patrons were friendly and helpful, and we had a delicious meal.

From dinner we walked off to the Fernsehturm, a television broadcast tower with an observation deck high above Alexanderplatz. Over 400 meters high, it's the tallest thing in Berlin, and it used to be in the East. It was built as monumental proof of the superiority of communism, but eventually it was found out that the design was Swedish and the funding came from foreign aid money. The view from the top was a bit disappointing, due in part to the weather but also to the absence of lights in that part of town.

The next morning we got up early to visit the zoo, which holds the world's largest collection at over 11,000 animals. The weather was pleasantly cool and we ambled about the place, but we didn't say too long. After all, we can go to a zoo anywhere, but how often do we get to go shopping at KaDeWe? Berlin's largest department store had the supplies we needed, and also a Bayern München shirt for me.

We revisited Checkpoint Charlie, which we'd passed through on our walking tour the day before. The Museum-Haus am Checkpoint Charlie held lots of interesting exhibits, but the place is rather jumbled. There are displays on escape attempts and devices, the history of Soviet expansion after World War II, the fall of communism, and non-violent movements of this century, but they aren't arranged in any coherent order. Still, we did our best and muddled through the displays, mostly marveling at the ingenuity and desperation of some of the escape devices.

From there we walked through the Brandenburg Gate. It was staggering to realize that for 28 years no one walked through that imposing gate, and as recently as ten years earlier we could have been shot for trying. Now the only risk is the traffic; Beemers and Benzes, not a Trabant in sight. The Brandenburger Tor is now a central spot in the city for public performances, and as we passed a concert was being staged, so unfortunately for us, the gate was mostly hidden behind scaffolding and rigging. We understand that it's now very common to not get a good look at the gate on a visit to Berlin.

Our last stop in Berlin was the newly renovated Reichstag building. An imposing masonry building, it now sports a glass dome at the top. A spiral ramp leads to the top of the dome for a view of the city. It's a lower angle of view than the Fernsehturm, and that allowed us to see the symbol of 1990's Berlin silhouetted against the darkening sky: the construction crane. Our tour guide had told us the day before that 80% of the construction cranes in Europe were in use in Berlin, over 1200 of them. From the dome, we could see hundreds. It will be interesting to see in a few years how much this city has changed.

No time to wait around now, though. The next morning, we were off to Copenhagen.