Hotel breakfast was excellent and much refreshed we assembled across from the hotel for Lucy to tell us about the history of East Berlin. As I remembered from our previous trip she gives you just enough information in each byte and spices it up with a humorous anecdote - no wonder we all enjoy her (photo 1 and as usual she is waving her hands about. ) We walked along Unter den Linden (photo 2) through the road works to the Opera House which is undergoing reconstruction. In front of the Humboldt University is where 20000 books were burned in 1933 and below ground is a memorial in the shape on a room of empty shelves.
Tourists abound at the Brandenburgh Gate which marks the border between old east and west Berlin. Nowadays of course they've been reconciled for 24 years. Photo 3 is Merryle and me in front of the Gate. Close by is the Jewish Holocaust Memorial, a controversial edifice of plain grey granite stones getting taller in the middle. It's a strange experience that 36 of us entered plus others yet in the centre you're eerily alone. I didn't feel the weight of millions of murdered Jews but I did feel that strange silence (photo 4)
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