Jacko and Blanket

Due to our somewhat limited time in Berlin, we thought that an overview tour might be our best bet to see the city. It worked out really well. We went through Terry Brewer's free tours (except you end up tipping relatively high). We saw all of the highlights and learned quite a bit about each spot. The highlights of Berlin included:

Spree River and Museum Island
Humbolt University
TV Tower
Fassenbender & Rausch Chocolatier
Bebelplatz
Check Point Charlie (kind of hokey)
Park above Hitler's bunker and offices
Memorial to the Jews
Brandenburg Gate
Hotel Adlon

All of the sites were very interesting, but some of our favorite little tidbits from the tour include:

1. There was a sign in German here telling boats not to anchor in certain areas of the river because undetonated World War 2 remants are lost throughout the city. Anchoring into one could end up blowing you up. The city doesn't seem overly concerned about this though! In fact, we heard a story about a man that found a WW2 hand grenade with the pin missing. He couldn't find any polic officers around, so he put it in his backpack, traveled the very busy metro until he found an officer and handed it over. The newspaper issued a statement the next day saying - If anyone finds WW2 remants, please leave them where they are and report them. No kidding!

I guess Berlin is really broke - iike 60 billion in debt broke. Their slogan is "broke, but sexy." It's very appropriate for Berlin which is a very artsy, counter culture city.

Former East Germany has happy worker man as the green and red pedestrian walking lights. After the wall fell, the government was going to switch them all out, but the people preferred them. It's called Ost-stalgia - or EastStalgia.

Bebelplatz was the site of big book burning that took place during Nazi Germany. One of the authors whose books were burned was Heinrich Heine, who was quote 113 years earlier saying - "wherever they burn books, eventually they'll also burn people." Quite eery foresight.

And of course Hotel Adlon...the balcony from which Wacko Jacko dangled Baby Blanket.