Second day in Berlin

After our full day of walking the day before, we were ready for a more relaxed day. We slept in and had a late breakfast of rolls,Nutella, and cereal at the Circus Hostel. Then we decided to go up to the Reichstag. The Reichstag is the Parliment Building in Berlin. It has a long and turbulent history but today it has been rebuilt to have a clear glass dome on top. There is a cone of mirrors in the center which reflects light into the chambers and the clear glass in symbolic of a transparent government which the people can keep an eye on. You can normally walk around the dome and up to the top for 360 views of the entire city. Unfortunately, it was closed for cleaning when we visited, but we were still able to go up to the observation deck.

After a breif rest on the lawns of the Reichstag and almost getting run over by frisbee players we walked through the Tiergarten, which is like Berlin's Central Park. I could imagine it's woods and clearings as perfect settings for painting of Greek gods. We did manage to find our way out, and avoided getting run over by bike riders, and walked over to the Kulturform. The Kulturform houses several museums and the Philharmonic orchestra. We were most interested in visiting the Gemaldegalerie and Germany's top collection of 13th- 18th century art. We saw works by Durer, Jan van Eyck, Pieter Brueghal, Rubens, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Botticelli, Titian, Carravaggio and Raphael. How's that for an impressive name-dropping list?

Once again, at this point I was famished and needed to find food. I was quickly crossing the point of no return when I get grumpy and undecisive. We walked through the grandious Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz, the "Times Square of Berlin." I didn't think it sounded all that exciting from the guidebooks, but was definately worth a quick stroll to see the massive canopy of the Center modeled after Mount Fugi.

We soon hopped on tram we thought would take us back to the Circus. It was a nice double decker with empty seats on top. We were thrilled as it took us past the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gates, but we started to worry a bit as it took us off in the opposite direction we wanted to go. Oh well, an adventure we said! We passed an international sandcastle contest and an Arabian village set up in the middle of the square. Cool adventure so far! Then we ended up at the Central train station. We thought the bus would just circle back around to where we were staying. We were wrong. THe bus driver came upstairs and ushered us off the bus speaking in not so friendly sounding German. (We were the only ones sitting on the bus just staring out the windows.) Oops. Our adventure didn't get us very far.

We decided to just get a cheap "noodle box" for dinner at the train station, which is take-away chow mein and people watch again. Then we hopped on the right bus, the 240, back to where we were staying. Another adventurous day was over.