Buzzing around Berlin

In front of the Reichstag

I went to write this post about Berlin yesterday, and literally the second my fingers hit the keyboard, Baby K let me know that she was ready to get up from her nap. I'm typing fast today with hopes of a better outcome.

A couple of weekends ago we decided to get way out on a limb and be spontaneous with a last minute trip to Berlin. I've mentioned numerous times on the blog that this is not really BK and my strongest point, but every once in a while we can pull something off. Monday BK suggested that we see if we could make it happen, and Friday we were on a plane to Berlin for a long weekend. I know, I know, there are four days in there that I had to plan, but still, that's a lot less time than I'm used to. At the beginning of the trip BK kept remarking that he was surprised that I didn't have certain things planned. Ummm, he only gave me a few days on this one, so not everything was as planned as normal. It happens.

So Berlin. Let me start out by saying I titled this post Buzzing around Berlin, not only because we were buzzing around, but also because of the sheer number of bees we came into contact with while in Berlin. It seems that Berlin, like some other urban cities has been promoting urban beekeeping in the past few years. So, when you're climbing to the top of a monument, often you can look out and see beehives kept on roofs of various buildings. I'm all good with this, until you get stung. I didn't, but BK did; at least it wasn't Baby K. I would say that bees in Berlin are similar to flies in other places. On the bright side, if there were any flies, I didn't even notice.

"Unity" outside of the Germany History Museum

Berlin is really a fascinating place that has gone through so much in the past 70 years. One huge thing I took away was that it's truly remarkable how far Berlin, and Germany in general, have come since WWII. There was essentially complete devastation, and now Berlin seems to be thriving and continuing to evolve as a city. This progress also made me really think about things happening in the Middle East. Not that the Gulf Wars were on the same scale as WWII, but Berlin put it into perspective around what it actually takes to rebuild and get a nation back on its feet again, despite all of the terrible things that its people may have done. Just something to think about.

Like most of our trips, we saw and did a lot of stuff during our three days in Berlin. We arrived Friday night in time for dinner and to go back to the hotel to rest up for Saturday. Saturday was a big day of seeing the sights. We hired a private tour guide to show us around the central part of Berlin. The city is quite spread out, and the true center is starting to take shape again, as up until 25 years ago a wall went through the true center of the city.

Brandenburg Gate

Here is a brief highlight of the things we saw:

• Brandenburg Gate
• Reichstag Building (Government buildings)
• Holocaust Memorial (numerous memorials to various groups)
• Berlin Wall memorial
• Site of Hitler's Bunker
• Museum Island
• German History Museum
• Pergamon Museum
• Tiergarten
• Berlin Cathedral
• Checkpoint Charlie
• Television Tower
• Numerous neighborhoods throughout the city

Don't worry, I'm not just going to give you a list and leave it at that. I think that each of these things has really interesting info that I want to share, so instead of writing the longest post ever, I'll share more pics and info on all of the sites in another post. If you've been to Berlin, hopefully our list brought back some memories. If not, I'll give the virtual tour shortly.

Anyway, so on Saturday we walked 32,000 steps. I think this might be my all time high for one day, and I walk a lot. Needless to say, we were really tired at the end of the day. That didn't stop us from getting a babysitter and enjoying dinner and drinks out to end our evening. We had dinner at a great French restaurant, stopped for a drink on the way home, then called it a night.

Her limit for the day was reached, and surpassed; yes, she is on the floor in public

Sunday we strolled through Tiergarten, Berlin's largest park in the city and made our way to other sites we wanted to see (included in the list above). Sunday was a bit more laid back, but we still walked and saw a lot in one day. On both Saturday and Sunday, we pushed Baby K a little more than we should have. The most frustrating thing about it was that we just didn't manage her as well as we could have, sometimes resulting in an overly tired or frustrated Baby K. She was, and always is, a trooper though, mostly taking everything in stride, sleeping in her stroller, and getting out to walk whenever possible. Our travel with her has changed since she's become so mobile, but she's still the best little travel companion we could ask for.

We headed back to Switzerland from Berlin on Monday morning, and timed the flight just right so that Baby K slept all the way back home from Zurich (easier flight times) to Montreux. We picked Tobs up from the kennel on the way home, and that was that.

I have to stop writing now, as Baby K is up, and I should really get to some of the things on my list that need to be done, as opposed to this one that I wanted to do. Hopefully I'll be back with lots of pics and info on the great sites we saw while in Berlin. It was fun to do a quick, last minute getaway. Our schedule for the fall is filling up quite quickly, so more adventures await right around the corner!