Back to Berlin
Went back to Berlin for a day this weekend thanks to cheap $399 tickets on Continental. Landed at Tegel about 8 a.m. Sunday and took Mrs. Ippy on a bus/train/subway & walking tour of the city.
Breakfast was curry wurst & fried potatoes at Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof. Nice thing about Berlin if you're only there for a day or two is that you can skip the museums and just read the signboards on the streets.
Found a new set of signboards that I'd missed last time about the elaborate bunker systems created in WWII. Most have been mapped and destroyed or resealed.
Also this time the Topography of Terror exhibit was open. This is on several square blocks that once housed the Gestapo, SA, etc. The buildings were leveled, covered with dirt & fenced off after the war. Attempts to excavate the buildings & create a museum keep running out of money, but there is an extensive collection of signboards detailing the history of terror in the 3rd Reich.
One thing that's struck me on both visits is that the heart of the city was really on the eastern side of the wall. West Berlin must not have felt quite like Berlin.
Next up on cheap Continental tickets are Hamburg ($430, May 9-11) and Amsterdam ($410, May 22-24). The Amsterdam fare was an especially lucky find: An immediate return from Berlin followed by a 23-hour layover in Amsterdam. We'll spend a couple hours at Tegel (probably anesthetizing ourselves with breakfast cognacs in the Air France lounge) & then hop on a KLM flight to Schiphol. Despite all the times we've flow through Amsterdam, this will be first time we've left the airport.
Breakfast was curry wurst & fried potatoes at Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof. Nice thing about Berlin if you're only there for a day or two is that you can skip the museums and just read the signboards on the streets.
Found a new set of signboards that I'd missed last time about the elaborate bunker systems created in WWII. Most have been mapped and destroyed or resealed.
Also this time the Topography of Terror exhibit was open. This is on several square blocks that once housed the Gestapo, SA, etc. The buildings were leveled, covered with dirt & fenced off after the war. Attempts to excavate the buildings & create a museum keep running out of money, but there is an extensive collection of signboards detailing the history of terror in the 3rd Reich.
One thing that's struck me on both visits is that the heart of the city was really on the eastern side of the wall. West Berlin must not have felt quite like Berlin.
Next up on cheap Continental tickets are Hamburg ($430, May 9-11) and Amsterdam ($410, May 22-24). The Amsterdam fare was an especially lucky find: An immediate return from Berlin followed by a 23-hour layover in Amsterdam. We'll spend a couple hours at Tegel (probably anesthetizing ourselves with breakfast cognacs in the Air France lounge) & then hop on a KLM flight to Schiphol. Despite all the times we've flow through Amsterdam, this will be first time we've left the airport.