Berlin, Germany (
tourist web site) is 118 miles northeast of
Leipzig. An enclave within Russian controlled East Germany
after WW II, it was identified as West Berlin in contradistiction to Russian controlled East Berlin. Since the reunification
of Germany in 1990, the two parts became one and the capitol of Germany. It is a large city, with a population of 3 million
in a metropolitan area population of over 6 million.
After the bus tour we had a very pleasant
walk on the
Kurfurstendam, Berlin’s main shopping street (modeled after the Champs Elysee in Paris). We went into the
huge
Ka De We department store (yes that is its name, which we could not remember when we wrote our letter) because we needed something
for dinner, and toured its amazing food floor, where there were many choices of prepared food to take out.
So this day
was very pleasant. We realized that there was much to explore in this center of culture, politics, media and science. For example,
there are between 153 and 170
museums (depending on your source of information) , 53 theaters, the most visited
zoo in
europe, many churches and a
botanical garden among a host of other attractions. (You can get detailed information about
these on the tourist web site link above.) But to explore these would take more time than we wanted to spend there.
Perhaps because of the unpleasant experiences with the people in the campground, we decided that we were more interested in getting
on to other places we had in mind for this trip--other cities like Dresden and Prague, and then Italy. So we ended up only
with that day in Berlin.
Based on conversations with others who have been to Berlin, we think our experiences
were atypical and that Berlin deserves a visit.
