Berlin report

For this trip, rather than breaking it down day by day, I'll do most of it at once. Maybe we can convince Stace to do a separate entry about the Third Reich tour that she and Tanner took.

But first, Legoland. We spent a day there and had the expected amount of fun. (Read that however you will.) Stace loved the restroom signs.

Here's a pretty cool Lego rendition of the Swiss town of Lucerne.

The next day, it was on to Berlin, where we took a bike tour. Here's Checkpoint Charlie.

And here's a marker showing where the wall used to be.

There's not much of the wall left, but here's one of the sections.

Here's the site of Hitler's bunker, where he committed suicide. The government doesn't want to open it up or even mark the spot for fear that it will become a Neo-Nazi shrine.

This is the Holocaust Memorial.

And, of course, here's the famous Brandenburg Gate. It was quite something to imagine the scene there twenty years ago when the wall came down.

The next day was really, really cold. Here's the Berlin Cathedral. (You all remember how much I like wandering around old cathedrals, right?)

Here's the Reichstag, sort of the German equivalent of Capitol Hill. We later walked up in the dome and took a tour.

Here's a view from the dome.

In this picture, you can see the Brandenburg Gate on the left and the Holocaust Memorial in the background.

At the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, there were many illustrations of the ingenious ways that people managed to make it out of East Berlin. On the other hand, there was this reminder of the many people who didn't.

It was a good trip. It could have been about fifteen degrees warmer, but we still had fun.