Surprisingly, the most interesting parts of the city are in the former East Berlin, once governed by communist GDR. The neighborhood surrounding our hotel was filled with partially ruined buildings, some of them restored enough to contain bars or studios but retain their postwar look.

Berlin was heavily damaged by Allied air raids in 1945, and recovery was slow in both east and west.

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The two transport systems are the surface trains, or S-Bahn ...

... and the U-Bahn, which runs underground. We used neither, preferring to walk everywhere. That said, it's a big city.

Another S-Bahn station, this one at Potsdamer Platz.

The green man on this traffic signal is all over the city. We liked his hat.

The river in Berlin is the Spree. This is a broadcasting tower called Fernsehturm, which was built by the East Germans during the Cold War, and the rather classical building is called the Bodemuseum.

Yes, that is a double decker train.

A bridge railing sculpture on Weidendamm Brücke.

This manhole cover was made in the GDR, and bears a hammer and sickle insignia. It's like many in the former East Berlin. Of course I may be mistaken, as I have yet to figure out why a Soviet-backed German government would write "Made in" in English).

This one on Friedrichstrasse is more decorative and features quite a few of the city's landmarks, including the towering Fernsehturm and to the left and right of it, the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate.

Speaking of which, this is me at the Brandenburg Gate.

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The gate is wonderfully detailed, having undergone a full restoration just a few years ago.

The gate was built in the eighteenth century as the city's most extravagant entrance. It's seen quite a lot of history. In 1945 it was rather badly damaged, and during the Cold War the East German government collaborated with the west to repair it, since it was the symbol of the city. The gate sat on the east side of the Berlin Wall, and was also inaccsessable to the East Germans because their government created a "dead zone" to prevent them from approaching the wall, so the gate was secluded for many years.

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The gate was a major location of the celebrations when the wall was taken down.

A short walk from the Brandenburg Gate is one of the highlights of our visit to Berlin, the Reichstag.

It was built after 1871 to house the German parliament (Reichstag means "Imperial Diet"). The parliament was subservient to the Kaiser, though this changed after the first world war.

The Kaiser didn't particularly like the words DEM DEUTSCHEN VOLKE ("To the German people"), which were added in 1916..

In 1933 the building was gutted by a fire that was probably started by a crazed Dutchman, but it was blamed on on the Communists in order to turn public opinion over to the right-wing National Socialists, or Nazis. Hitler, who was not a member of the Reichstag, never set foot in the building. The building sat in ruins in the 1930s and was badly damaged in the bombing of 1945. Famously, the Soviets hoisted their flag above it when they entered Berlin. In the early 1960s the West Germans set about restoring it, as they recognized that it should house the parliament after reunification.

The original dome was damaged by the 1933 fire and then by Allied bombing, so it was demolished during renovations. Recently a new one was designed by the architect Norman Foster. It's massive and open, with spiral ramps around the outside.

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A display on the dome floor contains photos showing the history of the building.

In the middle of this display is a window looking onto the main parliamentary chamber of the Bundestag ("Federal Diet"), the modern successor to the Reichstag. (The building, though, is still called the Reichstag.) The eagle visible through the window overlooks the chamber, which also gets sunlight from the open dome. A sun shield blocks direct sunlight from disturbing the members of the Bundestag.

If you look very carefully in this photo you can see the well-lit Brandenburg Gate out the dome window.

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There was a lot of new construction on the River Spree near the Reichstag.

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We had no idea what these blocks were at the time, and took a lot of photos of it.

A policeman asked me not to walk on the blocks, which, it turns out, is because it is a Holocaust memorial. Oops. At any rate I got some good photos of Andrea in it.

The park to the west of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag is called Tiergarten.

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Potsdamer Platz is just to the south. It was a major center of Berlin, but was destroyed in 1945 and then had the misfortune of being one of the areas through which the Berlin Wall ran, so it was not rebuilt until very recently.

The modern centerpiece of Potsdamer Platz is the Sony Center.

One of the prerequisites the city set for the Sony Center's architects was that they had to preserve the Kaiseraal, a few remaining rooms of one of the finest hotels in Berlin. While it was mostly destroyed in 1945, the dining room, staircase and some bathrooms have been preserved.

Along the street are some remnants of the Berlin Wall. Potsdamer Platz was so recently rebuilt because the wall hampered reconstruction after the damage of 1945.

Not far away is Checkpoint Charlie, one of a few military checkpoints between the Allied sectors of Berlin and East Berlin. The building was restored recently. During the Cold War this area was empty of buildings, but today the entire district has been rebuilt.

This sign greeted anyone headed to East Berlin.

Everything in the area is new, including Galeries Lafayette, a department store with a massive atrium that allows you look at other parts of the store.

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In the heart of the old East Berlin is Fernsehturm, visible from almost everywhere.

Interestingly, it is right next to one of the oldest churches in the city, Marienkirche.

Probably dating to the thirteenth century, Marienkirche was once in a dense neighborhood, but the surrounding buildings were destroyed in 1945. It's now in an open green space.

Across from it is Rotes Rathaus, the red city hall. It is not so named because it was in East Berlin, but rather because of its color. Still, the Communist city government used the building during the Cold War.

It was extensively renovated, and is again the city hall for all of Berlin.

Part of the green space around Marienkirche and the Fernsehturm is called Marx-Engels-Forum, which is not really a forum.

It has statues of Marx and Engels looking east.

Around the corner, the East German government rebuilt an old neighborhood of Berlin called Nikolaiviertel. Most of the buildings were moved from their original locations, but it works.

At the center of the neighborhood is Nikolaikirche, which was rebuilt after 1945 but looks convincingly medieval.

An old water fountain with a dragon.

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The main cathedral in Berlin is Berliner Dom, which was built in the nineteenth century and damaged in the Allied bombing. It was in East Berlin, and was only recently restored.

The stonework was patched to eliminate shrapnel damage.

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The dome was opened by an Allied bomb, which led to some weather damage later on.

And check out this angle ... except it isn't real. This is looking into a model of the cathedral built to aid in its construction.

Similarly, this isn't the real staircase. Only a model. But it's hard to tell.

Berliner Dom at night. (This is the real building this time.)

Berliner Dom is on Museum Island, which has a number of nice museums. We visited the Pergamonmuseum. Its star attraction is the Pergamon Altar, built in the 2nd century BC in the ancient Greek city of Pergamon, in Anatolia.

They also have other large remnants of antiquity. This mosaic floor bears the signature of the artist on a virtual piece of paper built into the floor.

This would be a good time to segue into our trip to Greece, but that's a week away.

The museum also has the Ishtar Gate, built in 575 BC as a gate to the inner city of Babylon.

We walked to Gendarmenmarkt, which has two identical churches and a concert hall. The square was almost completely destroyed in 1945, but has been entirely restored.

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We like boat cruises, so we took one on the River Spree.

There are quite a few new developments there, including this building that seems to have acquired a letter D.

This graffiti reminded us of the work of Banksy, an artist in London.

So on to more important topics, we had some quite nice beer in Nikolaiviertel.

And who can turn down a whole litre? I couldn't. Not when the glass is full of Paulaner Oktoberfest, one of my favorite beers.

The new Hauptbanhof is very modern, and one of the largest and most vertical train stations I've ever been in.

There is a high upper floor with trains, in addition to the lower platforms.

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As a side note, when we left Berlin we headed to Prague via Dresden. The city looked beautiful from a distance. Their Hauptbahnhof was a rather interesting canvas-covered structure.

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So we headed south along the cliff-lined River Elbe toward the Czech Republic ...