Day 5....more catching up.....Part 1

I thought I'd post a few more pictures of our trip to Germany. By the way, the exchange rate is terrible. For every American dollar, we received .57 cents in Euro. Almost everything was double the price there. If a small pizza was 17 Euro....the pizza cost about 32 American dollars but you also had to add 22% for the value add tax. When we ordered three pizzas per meal, plus salads and drinks you can see how quickly things added up!


Here is a picture of the new American Embassy...in Bradenburg Square.

This is hotel Michael Jackson dangled his baby over the balcony.

This is a picture of Checkpoint Bravo.

Forgot to tell you some things about Checkpoint Charlie. This is a tourist area now. On this side, of where the wall was, is a picture symbolizing the fact that Americans were on this side of the Berlin wall...on the other side of the American soldier is an Soviet soldier symbolizing the fact that Soviets were on that side of the Berlin wall.

This is a better picture of the chuch, in East Germany, before the Soviet regime was there that the royal families used for marriages, baptisms and of course worship. It was destroyed in the wars but the soviet regime actually are the ones that restored the church. Strange considering they were all atheists at the time. This is one of many wierd facts from East Berlin.

I think it's impossible to tell from this picture but can you see the cross on the ball of this TV tower? The Soviets built this TV tower in Eastern Berlin. The soviets were famous for having all the crosses cut down from all the churches and buildings in East Berlin in order to promote Athesim and squash Chrisitanity. However, after they built this tower, when the sun hit it a bright cross appeared on the ball. The papers said it was "God's Revenge".....he does work in mysterious ways. If it not obvious on the small picture, click on it to bring up the bigger version.


This is some fun architecture on a building in Berlin.

We saw some of these bicycles in Berlin. Kinzi called them octopus bicycles. There are tons of bicycles all over the place here. On many of the sidewalks, there were bicycle lanes and you'd better not be there or you'd get hit!

This is another section of part of the Berlin wall. Here are some additional facts. The Berlin wall was really two walls with a "death strip" in between where there were "shoot to kill" orders if an Eastern Berliner tried to escape. The "wall' was inside the Eastern Berlin by 1 meter so no one could do anything about it. The wall actually circled around Western Berlin making it an island to itself. The wall was erected (as a barbed wire fence initially) in one night.