Blown Away by Berlin

After Sagen it was on to Berlin. I had covered a good deal of the city, but thought I'd show Don around for the first time. I figured it would be a nice restful couple of days before heading on to France-boy was I wrong. Steph abandoned us the next morning, and DOn and I spent the day checking out some of the usual sites in the heart of the city-Fuhrer Bunker, Gestapo Hz an the building were Der Sturmer was published by Streicher (the party propagandist later captured by the 101). We also walked from the Sieges Allee through the Tiergarten, following the route taken by the Red Army as they stormed the Reichstag. As I had been to the spot wehre the war first started earlier, to be standing where it finished was extremely cool. Then into the Reichstag. We did not go up into the dome, but instead strolled around the roof and looked for the grafitti left by the Russians. From that height we had a fantastic view of the battle for the Tiergarten. Then it was on to Bendlerstrasse, which was the home for the Oberkommando Des Wehrmacht- head of the Armed forces and the place where Count von Stauffenberg and others planned their attempted assasination of Hitler and where the Count and three of his conspirators were shot in the courtyard.
Other highlites for the day were the U-Bahn stops used by the Germans as HQ during the fighting, Soviet Memorial, Luftwaffe Building, etc., etc. THe most unusual stop was the bunker near the old Reichstag. It was one of the huge flak/air raid towers constructed by the Germans and used through the end of the war. THis one remains intact. When we got there we found that it had been converted to other uses-in this case as a place for a carnival like "haunted house," where ghosts and goblins stalked you. It was all too much and after much laughing and telling the "Ghosts" to stop saying boo, we made it to one floor that gave a pretty interesting short history of the bunker. WHat the heck we thought, we're not likely to find a bunker of this size intact. Boy were we wrong....