Day Twenty Three - Berlin

27th July, after our visit to Dresden we carried on up the A13 towards Berlin hoping to find a campsite in the evening. By about 7pm we managed to find a campsite by the river about 20 miles from Berlin, so we could catch a bus and train to get into the city. All went to plan until we arrived at the station, which was unmanned and our German not being very good had trouble finding the ticket we wanted. Eventually we worked it out and within ten minutes the train arrived, a few stops later and we were in the centre of Berlin. Having spent a day in Dresden I think we expected more from Berlin, it is a nice city but felt somehow less friendly than Dresden. A lot of the building were obviously destroyed in during the war but the city has decided to almost remove those elements from its landscape. Even the Berlin wall is now reduced to a section of a few meters, with checkpoint charlie a touristy box in the middle of the street, so folks can be charged for taking photos. We visited the Sony centre one of the more impressive buildings in the city constructed after unification, where the Lego discovery centre is located as well as restaurants, shops and a cinema. at the end of a long day it was on the train and bus back to the campsite for a second night before heading off towards Holland.

Tracy with the Lego giraffe

The Sony Centre

The victory column, Designed by Heinrich Strack to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish Prussian War, by the time it was inaugurated on 2 September 1873, Prussia had also defeated Austria  and France, giving the statue a new purpose. Different from the original plans, these later victories in the so-called unification wars inspired the addition of the bronze sculpture of Victoria, 8.3 metres high and weighing 35 tonnes. Berliners have given the statue the nickname Goldelse, meaning something like "Golden Lizzy". The Victory Column originally stood in Königsplatz (now Platz der Republik), at the end of the Siegesallee (Victory Avenue). As part of the preparation of the monumental plans to redesign Berlin into Welthauptstadt Germania, in 1939, when the Nazis relocated the column to its present site at the Großer Stern (Great Star), a large intersection on the city axis that leads from the former Berliner Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace) through the Brandenburg Gate to the western parts of the city. The monument survived World War II without much damage. The relocation of the monument probably saved it from destruction, as its old site - in front of the Reichstag, was destroyed by American air raids in 1945. Without a British-American veto, the French would have dynamited the monument after the war.
 

What's left of the Berlin Wall

And finally our day twenty three selfie with the Berlin Wall behind us