’12 Oct: Berlin, Germany

…and some detail of the Processional Way. And then I took my own Processional Way home.

October 15

Cold wet day today but I went out anyway because I had my reservation for the Reichstag. This would be a nice hangout on a nice day.

Another view of the Cathedral.

Catching some fall…

…and another view of the Brandenburg Gate.

Lights, camera, action!

From the balcony of the Reichstag…

…and looking down from the top of…

…the dome! You can see where the congress meets looking down in the picture above, and here looking into the main meeting hall below.

And here’s the front. I’ll try to get a shot of the whole building because it’s very interesting.

October 16

It’s my last day in Berlin and I wanted to kick off the day with a nice collage of Little Lucy and her Kitti (I wrote about them on the 12th). I actually saw all of these at some point, but I got the photos off the internet.

I think he must do the same image in more than one place.

These pink cylinders are up and down the boulevard with historical displays inside marking the 775th year since the founding of Berlin.

The Fernsehturm, the television tower is the tallest structure in Germany. You’ve seen it in many pictures because you can basically see it from everywhere including out my room’s window.

Today I was planning to do the boat tour along the river and visit the tower’s viewing station. Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances (including a closed down boat operator and a four hour wait for the tower that was supposed to be ‘only’ two) I didn’t make it to the boat…

…but it was cool to get the view from the tower.

The arrow is pointing to the Reichstag. My main hope was to get a good picture of it but because of that silly building in front, and because of the long wait at the tower meaning by the time I got up there the sun flushed out the view, the picture is pretty bad but…

…I wanted to talk about the bears anyway and in the background of this picture you can get a little idea of how the Reichstag looks.

The bear in the graphic with the crown is The Berlin Bear and the models in the other picture are all over Berlin, called Berlin Buddies. You’ve seen these mascots around in other cities too – buffalo in Salt Lake City, angels in LA, moose in Montreal, many cities and I just can’t find the real story yet, but I’ll keep looking for a while.

The arrow is pointing to my hotel and Alexanderplatz (a massive transportation hub) is the big plaza with the fountain in the middle and as you can see the festival of food stalls is gone. They just trucked those babies all up a day or so ago and that’s it except now…

…there was a fun music and dancing event which was entertaining for a few minutes until I realized they were a God squad and a young woman singled me out to evangelize.

I made all my usual and oft-proven friendly and courteous gestures that always, always work to deflect the solicitations of street folk, but this chick Would Not Stop and when instead of just walking away like I Should have I hardened my voice and said ‘STOP, Please!’. Poor little thing, her eyes filled with tears and I felt reeeeally bad.

The odd thing to me is that in the end I found it a strangely soothing experience. The world over evangelists are all the same and I never learn.

The Cathedral…

…and a great view of the river Spree.

Fond farewells Berlin and tomorrow it’s Home-Sweet-Home for me. And that’s going to be great too.