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| Glenn's Journal for 9-17-02 - Berlin Tuesday morning and we slept in. We didn't get to bed until 2:00 am remember!!! Once we awoke, prepared for the day, had breakfast and we were off. What to do today, that is the question? Berlin has around 170 museums to choose from. The other note to make is that general elections for the new German Chancellor are scheduled for this Sunday, the 22nd. Political advertisements are all over town. This is also the first election that has allowed the press to cover it in an open format with opinions not just canned statements. For the U.S. no big deal but this is important for Germany. The recommendations included the Pergamon museum and the Wall Museum House at CheckPoint Charlie. So that is where we are heading. The Pergamon museum was first on our list. The museum displays classical Greek, Babylonian, Roman, Islamic, and Middle Eastern art and architecture. The Museum houses the famous Pergamon Altar (180 - 160 BC) and the Gate of Miletus built under Emperor Hadrian in the early 2nd century A.D.. In the next room is the Ishtar Gate from the reign of Nebuchandnezzar II (605 - 562 BC). We easily spent 3 hours at this museum. An audio guide was provided for free and added to the value of the tour. We stopped for a beer in between museums just to give our feet a rest. Checkpoint Charlie and the museum was next. We spent more than 2 hours here reading all of the stories about the checkpoint itself. The most interesting stories were about the attempts, successful or not, to cross over or under the east wall to get to the west. The amazing places that people were hidden and the years it took to dig, by hand, tunnels under the wall. Amazing stories!!! Well worth the visit. We left around 6:45 pm and hurried our way back to our hostel as Paul and Kim (friends from Seattle) were due in around 7:00 pm. We arrived back at the hostel a little after 7:00 pm and checked to see of they had arrived. They had not so we decided to check e-mail just in case something had changed. Some things had changed as the original train that they were going to take from Prague was cancelled. The only way to get to or from Prague was through Nuremberg which was more than a 12 hour train ride versus the normal 5 1/2 hour direct train. Paul and Kim did not make it to Berlin as they were flying back home on Friday and had run out of time. Oh well, maybe next time. We did meet our roommates Justin and Ryan, whom were both from Sacramento, where they went to school together. We shared travel stories and wondered how we were getting to Prague as they were leaving tomorrow for Prague. We decided to take it easy the rest of the night so we stopped in to the happy hour downstairs for a beer before heading out for dinner. Dinner tonight was at a nearby hotdog place. Again, remember the hotdogs here are a little different than home. The hotdogs were good as we had 2 each before retiring to our rooms to work on our first journals and figure out how to get to Prague ourselves. I crashed around 1:00 am and Erin stayed up later. She is having trouble getting a good night's sleep at this point of our trip. |
| A detailed picture of the Monument to the people of Germany. |