Berlin

One of my weekend European adventures back in 2006, I found Berlin to be a fascinating if busy place, even in mid-September then it was heaving with tourists.

It has some fabulous architecture, both classical in the heart of the city, and modernist with the impressive Jewish Museum (though I found the building better than the content).

The Brandenburg Gate was smaller than I expected, though made a good entrance to the huge Großer Tiergarten, home to numerous memorials. In the centre was the Großer Stern column, offering great views of the city, much of which was a building site when I was there.

The Deutsches Historisches Museum was sizeable though nothing stuck in my mind twelve years on.

Unlike the Pergamon Museum which I remember well, though less for the famous Pergamon Alter, more for the stunning Ishtar Gate found in Babylon, and this impressively thick city wall. It’s quite amazing what Europeans managed to remove and bring back home with them.

I didn’t make it into the Reischtag as there was always a huge queue, but another reminder of WW2 was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Another incredibly sobering reminder is the nearby Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The famous blocks are iconic, but I also found the small museum underneath them to be one of the most effective museums I’ve visited dedicated to this tragedy.

To end with a few randoms of the then new British Embassy, the area near Checkpoint Charlie, and a stack of famous German authors outside Humboldt University.