Next stop Berlin! You better believe the first thing we did was find a stein and a good meal. We actually made friends with a member of the band who were playing old school German tunes. He was an Italian who lives in Berlin and played the keyboard.

Our first full day was spent…. can you guess it? A bike tour! We used Fat Tire Bike Tours; the same company that we used in Paris. We saw all the sites and got the layout of the city. We stopped in the central gardens for a stein and lunch.

The next day we headed to a concentration camp to get a real appreciation of the history that isn’t really present in Berlin. Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp is just outside Berlin, and was a working camp. It was surreal and very moving. We had some people on the tour break down in tears. I think they had family who had experienced the camp.

Afterwards we visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe again. We had seen it the previous day as part of the bike tour, but we decided to see it again now that we had a new perspective of what it represents. We actually spent a lot of time wandering through the monument and discussing the possible interpretation and how it made us feel. It was quite an experience.

Afterwards we grabbed a couple of travelling beers and walked along the East Side Gallery to check out all the artwork along the Berlin Wall.

We spent the evening packing up and preparing for an early start the next day.