Tours, walks, nightlife in Berlin

August 6, 2010. We started the day learn­ing about Germany’s for­eign rela­tions ini­tia­tives from a spokesper­son at the Ger­man For­eign Min­istry. Later, we went on a pri­vate group tour of the Reich­stag, a build­ing with an incred­i­ble his­tory. It is where the Ger­man Par­lia­ment con­venes today. Angela Merkel occu­pies one of the purple-blue seats in the front just below the eagle in the pic­tures of the par­lia­ment cham­ber below.

The Reich­stag is eas­ily one of the world’s most stun­ning build­ings, both sym­bol­i­cally and archi­tec­turally. Its inte­rior had to be com­pletely rebuilt after the country’s reuni­fi­ca­tion. Art from many coun­tries, includ­ing Amer­ica and France, com­mem­o­rate both dark and pros­per­ous peri­ods in it’s his­tory. A new, large glass dome atop the Reich­stag pro­vides vis­i­tors with excel­lent views of the city in all directions.

Dur­ing the day, we took a walk­ing tour cour­tesy of the free iPhone app, City Walks. It took us from Bebelplatz and the Deutscher Dom to the Museum of Ter­ror and Check­point Char­lie. On the way, we also took in the Jüdis­ches Museum for a few hours. We all won­dered about the mean­ing of the Super­man sculp­ture by the entrance.

Nightlife in Alexan­der­platz: Edited to avoid bore­dom. We did walk about 15 zil­lion miles that day.