Unter den Linden by Foot

We were both awake at 02:00, but it was a little too early to start wandering around the city. Beth was able to get back to sleep, but I spent a lot of time tossing and turning till we got up at 07:00.

We had breakfast in the hotel lobby. Usual European fare -- granola, yogurt, black bread, rolls, salami, cheese, butter, and jams. The black bread wasn't the usual rye; it was full of sunflower seeds and crunchy bits -- I liked it.

Our plan for the day was to take the S-Bahn (train) to the east side of Berlin and then tourist our way back to the hotel on Under den Linden street. There's a major transit station near the hotel with a subway station underground, taxis and buses at street level, and trains (local and inter-city) on an elevated platform. We tried three times to get up to the S-Bahn platform and kept hitting stairways cordoned off with yellow construction tape. Eventually Beth was able to decipher some of the signs saying (essentially) "take the bus". Apparently the station for local trains was closed for remodeling.

We headed down to the U-Bahn (subway) as our second choice and picked up tickets from one of the automated dispensers. We jumped onto the U2 train with less than a minute to spare, but then couldn't find the validation station (similar to the one we used on the bus in from the airport). Apparently buses have validators on board while trains use ones in the stations (i.e., before boarding). We took our chances for a couple stations before Beth's conscience got the best of us, and then we jumped off to get the ticket validated. We got onto the next U2 (after only a few minutes wait) and before the next station the fare inspectors came through to examine our newly validated tickets.

Our destination was Alexanderplatz -- a large square in the east side of Berlin that as the site of many protests during the days before the wall came down. There was an outdoor museum of sorts with information on events leading up to reunification, and one of the displays was a poster of a cyclist with the caption "Cyclists have nothing to lose but their chains". A photo-worthy moment.

We visited a small museum on DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) history that was nice. The museum had lots of drawers and doors that you had to open up in order to see additional information. One of our daughters (nicknamed "The Snoop") would have loved it -- she's the one that casually mentioned during dinner one night "Dad, you know that sweater at the back of the bottom drawer in your dresser? Are you still using it?" This was a museum that actually encourages snooping through the drawers and cabinets! The museum had several displays on life in eastern Germany -- a car (the Trabant, which was essentially a cardboard car powered by a lawnmower engine), a mock-up of a typical apartment, and clothes (comparing Levi and east German jeans). They also showed a DDR-produced movie on housing in east Germany -- how they were making progress on eliminating the shortage, the excellent quality of the work, and how happy people were with the finished product.

Just down the block was the German Historical Museum, covering German history from (practically) the dawn of time through the present day. We spent several hours there and only made it through the top floor (through the end of World War I). Lots of armor, one of the Gutenberg Bibles, swords, models of villages and castles, paintings of dead guys, etc. One of the displays had a replica chain mail shirt that you could heft -- it must have weighed 30 pounds! I have no idea how knights were able to strap on all their armor and still be able to heave themselves onto their horses. Beth gave this the "Best Museum of the Day" award.

We finished the day by walking through Tiergarten -- a huge park in the middle of the western part of Berlin. After spending most of the day walking on cobblestone sidewalks in the sun it was nice to be on gravel paths under the trees. On one of the paved sections of the path we passed a small track hoe that was being "walked" down the path on 10' long 2"x6" boards -- they had three boards set end-to-end for each track and when one was passed over they carried it around to the front of the others. Not the fastest way to get down the path, but it kept the tracks from marring the pavement.