DAY 63

So I woke up today to the knock on the door of room service. The funny thing is that now when ordering I notice everything since I've worked on the other side. So anyways, after breakfast I headed out for my very busy day. I started my day at the concierge to have him circle all the places that I wanted to go on my map. Then took the metro to this area that has some pieces of the Berlin Wall. I got off at my stop and spent some time not only taking pictures, but also reading the plackes that they had put up next to the pieces. Then moved on to the Plenary Assembly Hall of the German Bundestag, aka German Parliment. Next to the parliment building across this little spit of the River Spree was this really cool looking, architectually, building, I later found out was a government building. I wish our government buildings looked like that. It looked like it should be a modern art museum or something. Since I was near it, I then went onto see the Bandenburger Tor; which is an arch at the Pariser Platz on the bloulevard were the Prussian Electoral Princes rode down, I think when they were crowned. On a VERY long walk to the Galleries Lafayette to get something to drink and a rest for my feet I had seen this kind of cool building and wanted to check it out, which I did after recharging myself. When I reach the biulding I find that it is part of a complex, named Gendarmarket Square. The complex consisted of two small cathedrals and a theatre and statrue in the middle of the two. The theatre was designed by Karl Friedrich Shinkel. Then in 1699, Prince Friedrich III (later the self proclaimed King Friedrich I) gave the immigrated French Huguenotes a site (next to the theatre, but north of it) for the building of a church. But then he gave ( to the south of the theatre) the locak German population a church as well. Since the rest of the things I had planned to see today were on the way back to the hotel, I started in that general direction. I was walking back when I sawthis really cool sculpture thing that I remebered seeing from my taxi coming from the train station. It was really cool looking. It was all these squares, some were only a couple of inches high and went to probably about 20 feet. The different levels were all mixed up and the sqaures were in straight lines horizontal and vertical. The coolest part of it all was that if you looked at it straight on the sqaures were in nice little lines, but if you looked at it diagonally they looked like they were all mixed up and no order what so ever. I later found out from the concierge that it was the new Holocaust Memorial. After this I stopped at the St. Marien-Kirche church. This is the second oldest church in Berlin and the only church from the Middle Ages in which services are still being held. The church was built in 1270 in a Northern German gothic brick style. While I was taking the side picture of the St. Marien-Kirche I saw this cool looking building that (I thought this was the best part) was painted in this light baby girl pink with white trim. Ok, now that I write that I sounds hideous, well it wasn't (just look at the pics)
so after taking the picture I walk over and read the sign saying that it's the Deutsches Historisches Museum (aka. German History Museum). Next to the museum was this bridge (you can see the museum in the background in it's pic) that looked like alot of those big grand bridges that you see in Paris. I read the plack on the bridge and saw that it was named the Schoss Brucke bridge, I forgot the year that it was buit, but I remember that I was long time ago. Right next to the hotel and my last stop before going back into the hotel was the Berliner Dom. It is a cathedral that was the former court of Prussia's royal family, The Hohenzollern's. It was built between 1894-1905 by the architect Julius Carl Raschdorff. I then spent the evening in the hotel watching a movie on the TV and then just hanging out in my room since I was very tierd from the lack of sleep that I got over the WEG days. While hanging out I went out onto my balcony which had the coolest view. Straight a head was this park, well at least it looked it, there were too many trees not to be, to the right the Berliner Dom, and to the left the "TV Tower". The "TV Tower" is not it's real name, but that's what everybody calles it, because that's what it is (It makes since though).

TORISTING BERLIN ->->->