Berlin Boogie

Greetings from Germany's capital city, where if you look closely at this picture you'll see signs of planes, trains, and automobiles--

But seeing as how we're just a couple of hundred meters away from the train station, two floors above one of the busiest streets in the city, and under the flight path of the airport from which we'll be flying out in (gulp) just a couple of hours, maybe we should be surprised if there WASN'T all that stuff in the picture.

That's right.  As I'm writing this it's 7:30 on Tuesday evening, or 1:30 in the afternoon back home.  To do everything we need to do to be on our 7 am flight, we need to wake up at 3 am Wednesday morning, or 9 pm Tuesday night back in the States.  So if we make it home as planned, we get to wake up 24 hours before our plane lands in Marquette.

Oh joy.

We did have a few final hours in Leipzig this morning, once again visiting the market

Where this time I didn't buy a 23 million calorie Quarktorte, instead opting for the choice I usually make at least once when we're over here

We then had to hop aboard the train to Berlin, and just as we made it out to the platform look what showed up--blue sky!

I know, I know.  It IS the beginning of October, so what should I have expected--sunshine and 80 degrees every day?

8-)

After hopping aboard the train you saw in the last picture we made it to Berlin and took a little walk along history-

If you're wondering why we're following a brick line in the road, that's where the Berlin Wall stood, as plaques every so often will tell you--

In fact, the Wall cut right behind the Reichstag, Germany's version of Congress-

And right in front of the Brandenberg Gate, right around the corner from the Reichstag--

However, we decided not to join everyone on the tourist-beaten path, and instead brought our dinner over to the Tiergarten, Berlin's huge city park--

The Tiergarten was once a Prussian king's hunting ground, and also served as a source of firewood for Berlin residents at the end of World War II.  Today, it's used by thousands of walkers, bikers, scooter-ers, and people using other various forms of transportation.  It's also an amazing respite from the hustle and bustle of a city of four and a half million people, as evidenced by the view we had from our dining area--

Well, 3 am is fast a-coming (and now I'll have that Matchbox 20 song stuck in my head for the next few days), so I'm going to have to cut this short.  If I have the time tomorrow--and seeing as how I'll have 24 hours in airports and airplanes, I should have PLENTY of time--I'll write a wrap-up with more stories and pictures, everything from another failed search for something--anything--with a cow on it, to wondering just why in the heck German chocolate makers seem to love a certain 18th century poet and philosopher.

Who knew?

See you tomorrow.  Or later today.  Or whenever the heck it'll be.

(jim@wmqt.com)