Honeymoon- Day 16- Berlin

We were at Salon de Restaurant Paul when they opened at 7:00 for coffee and pastries.  

The pastries were exceptional.  It makes me so excited for French food!

Belgium: 

Walk.

Train.

Plane.

Germany:

Bus.  

Tram.

Walk.

Kimmie!

We started our Berlin experience at the Bradenburg Gate, the only remaining Berlin city gate from the 1700s, the gate that Hitler walked through after he gained power in 1933, the location where Reagan gave his "tear down this wall" speech... the list goes on.

A pretty iconic place to start.

It is the current (temporary) site of the World Cup viewing area.  

Mexico vs. Brazil. 

Visiting the dome at the Reichstag parliament building is free, with a reservation.  The soonest reservation we could get is in two days, at 8:30.  You can't beat free, so we made the reservation and went on our way.  Well, we went on our way while Kimmie and Lea went back to the apartment for bedtime.

Humboldt University of Berlin is considered one of the best universities in Europe.  

Fifty five Nobel Prize winners either studied or taught here.  

Albert Einstein taught here, before his teaching gig at Princeton.   

The pink German State Opera was bombed in 1941, rebuilt two years later, and then bombed again two years after that.

St. Hedwig's Church (1742), nicknamed the upside-down teacup.

Berlin is an interesting place to wander around.  So much history has happened in these beautiful buildings that currently house modern shops and cafes.  

You can't help but wonder what they were used for at one point, especially in the Topography of Terror area, where the Gestapo and the SS were centralized.  

This is the backside of the Anhalter Bahnof train station, where nearly 10,000 elderly men and women were deported from 1941 to 1945.

This is the front side of the station.  

Jews were deported in a third class, guarded car, because the train continued its regular services.  Most of these people went to Auschwitz.