Berlin

We arrived in Berlin around 10:30 am from Hamburg. We were staying in the old East Berlin not far from the wall. As we were too early to check in we went for a walk into the city, only about 15 minutes and had a look around ourselves before joining a walking tour of Berlin that started at 2, we had a great guide, who although was Irish had a PhD in German folklore and the use of German symbols in Nazi Germany, so a very enthusiastic informative guide! So enthusiastic the tour went for about 5 hours instead of 3  There is a lot of building happening in Berlin still as part of the reunification process and this is difficult because Berlin is an island so the water table is very high and everywhere you go there are these pipes coming out of the ground which are pumping water away from the construction site. The other problem of course is courtesy of WW2 and it is the layer of bombs that lie underground, on average there is one callout a day to check on a WW2 bomb that has been uncovered. Most are not live but occasionally they are, they estimate they will need this service til about 2040! Some curious things about Berlin architecture….you can’t trust when the building looks like it was built, this is not just a WW2 thing either. The Berliner Dom/Berlin Cathedral looks very much from the outside like the Marble Church in Copenhagen, but it was only built in the very early 1900’s. Likewise the building next door that is in many Hitler newsreels looks ancient but again is less than 200 years old. Additionally before the separation of Berlin in the 1960s there were two Palaces, the one that was located on the West side was maintained and still looks as it did, the one on the East German side was demolished by the Soviets and is now being rebuilt identically on the outside with nothing on the inside for tourism…there is also a fake building that they ran out of money to finish so erected huge canvases instead…