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Our last day in Berlin started out rainy, so we didn't get good pictures of the sites on the bus tour of the city.
We got out at several places. This is the American Embassy right next to the Brandenburg Gate.
And Kimberly in front of the gate itself.
This is the new German Parliament building.
And the new government center. Evidently when they decided to move the unified government back to Berlin, they had to build a lot of new government buildings to support that.
A different angle on the same government headquarters. Angela Merkel's office is on the fourth floor.
This is a tower decorated with captured French cannon from different wars.
I don't even remember what this is.
We stopped at the monument with the largest remaining whole piece of the wall. This is the street side.
And the back side.
The wall is right on the River Spree.
Kimberly with some of the artwork up close.
This is a Holocaust Memorial consisting of 2,711 concrete stelae. You can walk among them, and they get taller and deeper in the middle to give you the feeling of being trapped.
The supposed tour of "Berlin's Secret Past" is pretty much a non-event. Here is a small marker for where Hitler's bunker was, but it is all filled in and sealed, to keep any Neo-Nazis from making a shrine out of it.
This is a sign from the courtyard where the "Valkyrie" (think Tom Cruise) conspirators were shot.
Driving through Checkpoint Charley.
The Topography of Terror museum started as a open-air historical display, taking you through the lead-up to the war and through W.W. II.
It is located next to another largely intact section of the wall. The actual displays are under the plexiglass on the right of this photo and go down the whole block in chronological order.
Some parts of the wall still stand because they would be difficult to remove.
One of the display panels as you walk down the block.
Look. Berlin is Irvine's sister city: they have a big useless balloon ride as well.
Our free time took us back on foot to the Checkpoint Charley. These are actors for getting your picture taken.
For our free time in the afternoon, Kimberly and I decided to go over to Museum Island and the Pergamon Museum. We like the historical and sculpture museums better than typical art museums, and the Pergamon was a perfect combination. This is a display showing some of the packing crates for shipping the entire Pergamon Altar over to Berlin from Turkey. The museum was designed specifically to show off these reconstructions.
Look at all the beautiful goddesses.
They had some very fine sculpture on display.
A diagram showing the layout of Pergamon.
The golden hat.
Another lion for Kimberly.
A display of musical instruments. At least this museum was cool about photographing the exhibits.
The reconstructed Market Gate of Miletus.
The Ishtar gate.
Close-up of the panels around the Ishtar gate.
And another for scope.
Islamic and Chinese lions are not nearly as impressive.
Some Turkish engravings.
And another shot of the gate.
Our farewell dinner that evening was to Alte Stadt-Mauer.
It was a fun little restaurant with an accordion player, a violinist, and a guitar player. We had a fun time singing some of the new German songs we had learned along the way.
Here is Hans getting the Berliner appetizer, including blood sausage and some dried fish.
Us saying "Danke" and "Auf Wiedersehen" to our tour guide, Noel.