Just back from a few days in the German capital, the place was World Cup crazy with car flags and jerseys everywhere, things just came to a halt when all the matches were on. Did all the usual tourist stops - Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie but there were plenty unusual sites also. The Gestapo headquarters have been turned into the Topography of Terror, which is the main museum on Nazi Germany and one of the last stretches of the Berlin Wall suddenly appears when you leave the Nordbahnhof station. Stayed in a hotel on Adenauerplatz near the Ku'damm, cheap enough but good quality at the same time.
The first real time I was in Berlin (and spent more than 1-2 hours in the train station or shuttling between places) was in 3 years ago this summer and it was an amazing place. It's one of those cities where you can sense the past in a very real way and one of the most poignant spots for me was the Soviet Army memorial - first off the Soviet tanks were tiny, which made sense why Russian tankers were all barely over 5 foot and recruited from ethnic groups like tatars, chuvash and cossacks. But when you start looking at the ages of the soldiers who died on the big memorial wall in the final battle for Berlin, and when they died, it really hits home. Great city and people.
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