Most surprising part of the day? Finding the Batmobile from The Dark Knight Rises in the Tiergarten. Drool.

After, we made our way through the Tiergarten. It's a beautiful stretch of urban parkland, with acres and acres of green space and tall trees to escape the busy city life. We came to the Victory Column, built in 1880 to commemorate Prussia's victory over France.. The gold lady on top is made out of melted down French cannons! We paid our admission and climbed up the Column to its peak, where we were treated to a gorgeous view of the Tiergarten and the surrounding...

After the Brandenburg Gate, we walked south, along the east edge of the Tiergarten, to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The outside of the memorial is made up of thousands of rectangular concrete blocks, set up over uneven ground that descends as you move towards the centre of the monument. Beneath the ground, a holocaust museum lies, with special focus on the personal and family impacts of the annihilation of the Jews. After the monument, we found ...

Very busy day today. Started at the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol long steeped in German history. This is especially true since the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the Gate served as a symbol of German unity. The main road leading up to the Gate (east of the Victory Column) is currently closed to traffic and had giant screens set up along its length, allowing tens of thousands to watch Eurocup. Very cool setup... And it'll be packed with German soccer fans Friday nig...

Pierre and I made our way through the rain after the museum to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park, the larger one of two in the city. The memorial is absolutely massive, bordered by murals of Soviet soldiers with Stalin quotations on them. The memorial is over 20,000 square meters and is crowned by a Soviet soldier carrying a child and a sword, crushing a broken swastika beneath his feet. Intense.