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Day 26 - The weather changed today with cool & overcast conditions. We headed out prepared for rainy weather, but as it turned out, the rain stayed away. We joined a walking tour group at 10.30am, meeting up with our guide Alex at the Hackescher Markt Plazt. He was a newly graduated uni student with a masters in German History. He was an American teaching English in Berlin in his spare time and has been doing walking tours for about 2 years. With that sort of background he was full of knowledge on the history of Berlin. The tour started with a visit to Museum Island, situated on the Spree River in the city. There are five museums, the National Art Gallery as well as the Berlin Cathedral are all located here. Many of the buildings we saw on the tour had been partially destroyed during WW2 and have been rebuilt. Many still bear the scars of the war. It was then on to the Humboldt Uni to an area where Hitler's Nazis burned all books and literature that had a connection with Jews. This all started in 1933 at the beginning of Hitler's rise to power. The tour then passed the very impressive French & German cathedrals and only a short distance from the Brandenburg Gates. An impressive series of stone archways built inside the West German boundary. Other noticeable buildings near the Gate were the French and American Embassies, and the 5 star Adlon Hotel. The hotel was where Michael Jackson held baby Blanket out over the balcony (4 storeys up) and made the headlines. Close by the Gates is a Holocaust memorial. This covers many acres and is made up of 2711large rectangular grey blocks of concrete nearly all of similar shape and all aligned in perfect rows. We moved on to the site of Hitler's impenetrable bunker, where he sheltered from attacks and eventually committed suicide in 1945. A few blocks away were the remains (about 200 metres long) of the Berlin wall that separated East from West. Built in 1961, it remained a barrier until 1989, and only a small section remains today. Next to the wall exists a very impressive museum (called the Topography of Terror) showing graffic pictures and information on Hitler's reign of terror from 1933 to 1945. Our tour ended 3 and a half hours later at Checkpoint Charlie, a famous gate in the wall that was closely guarded by the Americans on 1 side and the Russians on the other. It was a great tour for those like us with limited time to spare. After a day of many kilometres of walking we headed home for an eat-in dinner in our apartment, our first one on tour.
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