Berlin.  Another City that conjures up imagines, and not good ones, for those born from the 30's onwards until 1989.  This City has seen its fair share of scandal over time but it seems to have come through the other side without much baggage.  Today Berlin it one of the most active cities in the world when it comes to construction with crane upon crane in every view and enough scaffolding to construct a stairway to the moon (note; that last comment is not true, ever).  Some places that were destoyed back in WWII are only now finding a new life while most of the others have had to be faithfully rebuilt.  A lot of this is because of the East-West German divide that finally fell in 1989 and has opened up the East German side to international businesses and expertise.  Also a thing called the 'Berlin Wall' allowed a lot of valuable space to become available when it was finally torn down.
Audrey has been to Berlin before and spoke glowingly about it so she was naturally excited to go and see it again, to see what's different.  It's obviously a great city, no doubt about it.  It has the required historical museums full of artifacts plundered from other Nations before said Nations knew the importance of them.  It has grand boulevards with shopping to die for.  It has large recreational parks for the citizens to enjoy and more importantly, it has a good vibe, one that you can sense, one that you know is good, basically the complete opposite to what we felt in Greece.
The number one thing that any tourist that visits Berlin has to see is the Berlin Wall and the history that goes with it.  That means a trip to Checkpoint Charlie and the Mauermuseum.  It can get crowded but when we went it was fine and we got to see it all without being pushed around by the thong.  Truth is we were only going to go there for around 1 hour but ended up staying for 3 because the information that was provided was fascinating, from the actual apparatuses used in the successful escapes to the behind-the-seen stories from the 'victims', the East Germans that were stuck in oppression.  Most of the 161 km's of 'The Wall' has been removed but there are 3 significant portions left; near Checkpoint Charlie, along the Spree River (a section known as 'The East Side Gallery') and the Bornholmer Strasse Border Crossing.  Visiting any, or all, of these places can give you a real sense of what the Eastern Berliners had to put up with.  I mean, it was a wall that was basically put there to keep them in.  As an Australian who can travel freely it's something that I find hard to fathom.  For us a wall is there to keep people out, not in.  It was also a very successful construction as at the end of the day it stopped the 'brain drain' that was occuring from 1946 to 1961.  But it was also a sad thing.  Because it went up overnight, 13th August 1961 to be precise, if you were on the wrong side that night, you were stuck.  If you were at work in West Berlin and your house was in East Berlin, you never went home.  If you picked up a beauty at the bar and then spent the night at her/his place, in the morning you were staying there for a bit longer.  It divided families and friends that didn't have a voice in the whole subject.  The 'Wall' was constantly improved throughout the time it stood to the point were it was basically impregnable.
In Berlin we decided to do a walking tour on the 1st day and a bike tour on the second.  Our first guide was of Swedish-Japanese decent who lived in London for a while, the bike guide was a Tasmanian.  Out of all the other guides that were there I didn't hear one single person speaking German !!  Both tours were great however as there gave us information of the locations that we went to, and honestly we would have missed some of them if we were on our own OR not have know the importance of the places that we were at.  Like Friedrichstrasse Station and the corresponding 'house of tears'.  This was the location that legal emigrants from East Berlin left there family's forever.  I'll repeat, FOREVER.  Could you make such a decision?  I don't think that I could.
One thing that's very obvious in Berlin is the attitude to environment.  Berliners love bikes and they are everywhere.  When we were on our tour I never once felt unsafe in amoungst the traffic, it seems that the drivers also respect the neccessity of using bikes whenever possible.  Germany on the whole is also a leading country when it comes to renewable energy with Wind Farms everywhere.
We will come back to Berlin because we would like to see the place without all the cranes and construction that are going on.  Probably in about 5 years ... at least.