Off to Berlin with Benny. We packed up and left Benny’s early , our earliest start yet at 6.45am. A tough start as we went to watch Benny perform last night, then came home for dinner and packed, meaning we hit the sack at about 1am. We had a 3 hour drive before a bike tour of Berlin city starting at 11am. The roads were pretty quiet but still driving at amazing speeds.

The day started well with DB seeing his first deer as we headed to Berlin. He has been looking for a couple of weeks as there are signs everywhere we have travelled so far. 🙂

On our arrival in Kreuzburg (an outer suburb of Berlin) we were amazed at how dirty and the amount of graffiti there was everywhere. It was very much the outskirts of the inner city and like little Turkey with Doner Kebab and Felafel shops everywhere. Once we made our way in to the city centre the streets were cleaner and there was less graffiti.

We arrived at our accommodation with plenty of time to spare to get to our tour. We then walked from accommodation to city centre. The tour was 4.5hours riding around the city. We saw many monuments, historical sites and parklands including Reichstag Building, Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Television Tower, The Holocaust Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin Cathedral, Museum Island, Potsdamer Platz, Site of Hitler’s Bunker, Deathstrip Watchtower, a ride along the River Spree and through the Tiergarten Park, passed the Zoo, the Victory Column and the site of Nazi book burning. It was a very interesting day of history. We learned why the statues on many on the buildings are black, this was because during WWII Hitler had them buried in forests and lakes with their locations recorded so they could be dug up after the war, this was because the bombs weren’t dropped in the forests just where the most damage could be done. So after the war the buildings that had been bombed and/or destroyed were rebuilt and the statues dug up and put back in their place. So the buildings are new and clean and the statues have been left in their original condition. This was apparent throughout the city.

The history of Berlin and the Nazi regime was very interesting. The number of Jews killed was Incomprehensible – it was over 6 million. One way it was explained was at the Jewish memorial there is a recording of every Jews name who died in WWII and it takes over 6 years of continuous play for their names to be read out.

Another bit of German irony. The Nazis ordered all crosses be removed from the churches and then later they built a TV tower (which as always had to be big) that when the sun shines on the silver ball it forms its own cross.

We had a great lunch with the tour at a pub in the city and got to know a few of our fellow bikers. It was great to share our last day with Benny.

Went shopping with Benny to get his winter coat. The shop was in the most unlikely building for a designer shop.

We headed out for another traditional dinner at Max & Moritz. The food was very nice but DB not too keen on half raw ham sausages but he ate most of it “as an experience”.

We found out today why I struggled so much to find accommodation for Berlin the weekend as the Berlin Marathon is on this weekend. Today was the rollerbladers race and tomorrow is the runners. With over 20,000 bladers and over 40,000 runners plus their support crews I think Berlin was pretty well booked. 97% when I started looking last Thursday night. We were lucky to find somewhere.

Benny’s words – “Well if you did a little research you would have known about it”. Hahaha!!!

Sorry I have missed a couple of names on the photos but don’t have time to check their exact names. Will do next time we stop.