#3 Berlin - Day 2


And what a DAY 2 it was! We walked over 14 (!) miles all over Berlin in spectacular weather that ranged from beautiful sunshine to snowfall. Typical April weather in Germany - Der April macht, was er will! 

In the morning, we went to a bakery right next to our hotel to have breakfast. Then we walked on the Kurfürstendamm (Berlin's oldest and fanciest shopping street - thankfully all shops were still closed!) to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, a church that was bombed in WWII but never rebuilt to commemorate the horrors of the war. 






Next up: Friedrichsstraße and Checkpoint Charlie, the former border crossing between West and East Berlin, controlled by the American side of the Allied Forces. Right around the corner was a very cool, relatively new attraction, a 360-degree panorama of the Berlin Wall and the so-called death strip by the artist Yadegar Asis. 







Lunchtime. 
We ate in the food court in the Mall of Berlin, not quite as fancy as the  Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe - Europe's largest department store) that we also walked through, but yummy and affordable. 




The food re-energized everyone enough to learn more about the history of the Berlin Wall. We walked to the Bernauer Straße and its many memorials. Frau Legall shared her family's history of living in East Germany during the Cold War, making history the kids may have only read about before become real and personal. 












We also went to the Alexanderplatz to go up the highest TV tower in Germany, but unfortunately the "Alex" was closed today. So we just circled it a couple of times and moved on to the Museumsinsel and the Humboldt Universität.







A memorial to remember the book burning by the Nazis right in front of the university 





A snack (Döner or Currywurst) at the Hackesche Höfe...



...and then we went to our final stop of the day, the Bundestag (the German House of Representatives). There we were treated to a fantastic tour by Eberhard, a lawyer who volunteers his time to show tourists the inside of the Bundestag and tell them lots of interesting facts and stories about the long history of the building. 

Eberhard was the most entertaining tour guide I've ever experienced, giving us an authentic taste of dry, German humor. He also learned how to say Atlanta the "right" way. Mariana impressed him by knowing who Olaf Scholz was, Sanjay practiced his first (and probably last) campaign speech for the FDP, and Branden finally learned -- on behalf of our SGC Quiz Bowl team -- what the national bird of Germany is. 

We ended the tour by going up into the dome, a true architectural marvel. 













Today was amazing, and so were the kids. There was hardly any whining about all the walking or the cold temperatures. Everyone was having fun but also being respectful at the memorials and the Bundestag. They listened when there was something to learn, and if someone couldn't listen anymore because of input overload, they didn't let it show and didn't distract others. Frau Legall and I are once again so lucky to chaperone a fantastic group of kids.

I probably forgot half of what else we did today, but I'm about as tired as Hallie and therefore need to go to bed.


Tomorrow: More Berlin adventures and then we're off to LEIPZIG!!!

Gute Nacht!

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