When the wheels fell off the proverbial bus...

Like many bloggers it seems (though I REALLY hesitate to put myself in that group), the wheels sort of fell off my blog bus at some point last year.  As we started to settle into life and school in Germany in 2012, sitting at the computer for more than a minute here or there became more challenging.  Because May is a month full of 4-day weekends/school holidays, I was sure that was when it happened, though in review, I found it was even earlier.  In February, we had two long weekends, one for the big German celebration of Carnival and another one a bit later in the month.  We decided to take a train over to Berlin (about 5 hours) for the latter long weekend.  It might have been one of the coldest weekend we have ever experienced.  Let me pick up there...

Berlin is such a cool city with a complicated history.   We walked about, at times in flurrying snow and blustery wind, checking out the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, remaining parts of the wall, the Jewish memorial, and the DDR museum, where by the way, we found the exact countertops found in our current flat, in the sample apartment from East Germany!  It was such an informative weekend from a historical standpoint.

The Checkpoint Charlie museum has an overwhelming amount of information about the wall, the famous checkpoint, and four "quadrants" of the city of Berlin post WWII, but the stories of how people
                   tried to get to the other side of the wall were at times, unbelievable and plentiful.

The Berlin Holocaust Memorial was incredibly thought provoking...the snow covered stones, cold and
                                      gray, seemed to touch those around, even in their stillness.

                                             Home/palace of the Chancellor of Germany:

The DDR museum showcases what it was like to live in Communist controlled East Germany, on the
                   "other side" of the Berlin wall.  There was only one kind of car, a Trabant...

                                Unique to the Berlin area...green crosswalk "men"...love them!

                          We'd love to visit this amazing city again...perhaps when it is a bit warmer!