May 18, 2000

We began our walking tour of Berlin at 9:00am after saying goodbye to one of our guides, Eric. He was going home so the girls surrounded him for pictures, we'll make sure his wife gets a copy of who he has spent the last ten days with!

We met our excellent guide, Greg, next to the zoo at a U Bahn stop. We got on the train and went across the city into the former East Berlin. We saw the Brandenburg Gate which was originally constructed in 1789 and used on maps dividing gates between East and West Berlin. Other sites we saw during the four hour walking tour were: the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), Unter den Linden (a broad avenue that originally had famous palaces and cafes) and Humbolt University (famous names associated with this school were Karl Marx, Albert Einstein and many others). Located nearby was a memorial for the day the Nazi's held the infamous book burning. We saw the Merliner Dom (the largest Protestant Cathedral in Germany), the remnants of the Berlin Wall, the site of the Palace of the Kaiser, Checkpoint Charlie, as well as the site for a future memorial being built to commemorate victims of the Holocaust. It is intentionally located near Hitler's Bunker. The people chose to recognize the people lost and there is no marking for where Hitler ended his life.

We then went back to the shopping area near the hotel and split up for lunch and an afternoon of shopping, laundry and sleeping. We met for dinner at 7:30pm and reviewed the schedule for the next day. We had our final German dinner...pork snitzel, potatoes, white asparagus with cream sauce, split pea soup, and bread. We're ready to move on to a lighter type of eating, some of the players went to another restaurant and chose to order chicken breasts, baked potatoes and fajitas.

The other major site near the hotel, the famous Ka De We department store, has a food emporium with a fish market, coffee, chocolate, wine, pastries, beef, pork poultry, seafood, vegetable and teas specialized areas all on the six floor. It was really impressive!

We are off to our third and final country tomorrow!