BERLIN OCT 9, 2010

There is a lot of "recent" history in Berlin, and by that I mean the stuff that happened before, during and after the big wars...The first photo is the Brandenburg Gate which was built in 1791 while Berlin was Prussian, but more famous to us because of its fame during the cold war, when it was just a few feet on the "East" side of Berlin and had the WALL in front of it...and with the second photo of the part of the wall that is still there with a full block of pictures and history now displayed and of course Checkpoint Charlie..one of the few "border crossings" during that time..The wall went up while we were living in Germany (1961) and it came down when Germany became re-united in 1989. I visited the checkpoint museum and got to see memorabelia regarding it, the wall, the many escapes, successful and not etc. The story about Germany's history, the rise of Hitler and the Nazi's, and the war with its enevitable destruction of much of the country is very interesting.