Today we took a regional train to Potsdam to see the Sansoucci palace. We did not tour the inside because we would have been assigned a time that would have made us late for our train in Berlin. But we were able to tour the gardens. See pics. I should tell you we had planned to check our luggage in a locker at the Berlin station. We followed the arrows to the lockers but we were walking in circles around the train station. Every time we followed an arrow up the escalator when we got there the arrow pointed down. Very confusing. For a train station that was clearly marked, new and nice we just could not figure out why the arrows for the lockers were so confusing. When we finally found them, they were all full so we decided to take our bags to Potsdam and see if they had lockers. Fortunately they did. I took pics of the Berlin station so you can see how large it is. The pics were taken from the bottom floor and there are 5 floors.
We are now on a train from Berlin to Prague – where in Prague we will catch an overnight train to Krakow. We know it seems like we are backtracki
ng sometimes because we will stay in Prague later. The reason is we are trying to keep the amount of train changes per trip low. If we went the most “direct” way we may have to change trains 7 or 8 times. There is also a cost factor as our rail passes are not valid in Poland and we try to keep the trip on Polish soil short because of cost.

We got up and walked to Checkpoint Charlie which is only a short walk (for us). We also toured the Checkpoint Museum. There is so much in this museum it would take months to see it all. There was a great deal of history plus the ingenious plans of how people escaped East Berlin. There were many exhibits of the cars, ultralights, balloons and disguises that people used. Then we took the subway to go to a large department store, Ka De We, to see the gourmet food section. It is similar to Harrods which means it is absolutely fabulous. When we were done at Ka De We we walked to the Tiergarten which is a large park that houses the zoo. We walked in the park and found a biergarten. See pics. These places are wonderful . You can stop in to meet friends, rest or have a drink and some food. Everything is self service so there is no pressure. We were there right after 5pm and it seemed to be a gathering place for people after work. After a drink and we cooled off ( it has been hot here) we walked the entire park on our way back to our hotel. See pic of Marsha drinking wine again. Yes, we have walked across Europe by now. If we had pedometers they would say Tilt!!!. We found a nice restaurant on the way back to the hotel and stopped for dinner. The appetizer was a sampler platter, of course all good. Marsha had baked vegetables covered in cheese and I had schnitzel with French fries and a salad. After dinner we walked the rest of the way to the hotel. I should mention we walked a major portion of Berlin and it is a nice city with many wide boulevards and modern buildings. There are construction projects everywhere we went. Tomorrow we are going to Potsdam and then taking an overnight train to Krakow. I don ‘t know when I’ll have a net connection to post again.

Here are the pics.

We arrived in Berlin at approx 1pm. We found our hotel, a Holiday Inn Express can you believe it! We dropped our luggage and headed for the sights of Berlin. We went to the Brandenburg Gate and Unter den Linden Blvd. See pics. Around the corner is the Bundestag with the glass dome. We had make reservations to go up in the dome so we waited an hour to make them. The Dome is closing tomorrow for several days for cleaning so today was the only day we would be able to see it. Our reservations were for 9:30pm but we were lucky to get them as there was only a few places left.
Marsha had called friends of hers and arranged to meet them at a local biergarten. These people are American citizens who have lived and worked in Berlin for about 20 years and they love it. James said Berlin is becoming very cosmopolitan and is rapidly becoming the Silicon Valley of Europe. We had dinner at the biergarten – see pics- self explanatory food and all was delicious. Marsha’s friends are great! They were warm and friendly and we had a great time until we had to leave to tour the Bundestag. There are many picture from the dome and of the dome. It was really an unusual experience.