On Sunday snow was forecast, so we decided we’d do indoor things. We wanted to see Checkpoint Charlie and the Jewish Museum, figuring the time was best spent in a warm museum instead of outside on the cold street.

Checkpoint Charlie had a really cool museum that had great exhibits from the East. We saw how all kinds of escape methods, like modified cars, a personal submarine rocket, and hot air balloons were used over the years to escape to the west. One lady even stuck herself into two suitcases, joined together, and was carried out - all 154 pounds of her!

We killed a couple of hours in the museum, a bit longer than we intended to, and discovered we didn’t have as much time as we wanted for the Jewish Museum. So instead we walked a little distance to where the only real portion of the wall still stands.

It is surrounded by fencing so that no one can go up and take out chunks for their collection at home, but I took this picture of our hosts to give a perspective as to how tall the wall is.

I’d heard somewhere that Berlin was known for Mexican restaurants, and by this time we were getting a little hungry, so I looked on my phone and there was one less than a mile away. We started off walking that direction - so much for the idea of being inside on this cold, snowy day - and when we got there we discovered my source must have been out of date, because there was no restaurant nearby.

Not to be deterred, I looked up a second one and I made sure it had good reviews before heading that direction. Two subway lines later, we walked up to this:

Yeah, that sign that says “Open?” Not so much.

By this time it was almost 2:00 and our train left around 4:00, so we decided to go back to a Mexican place near Shaun and Mindi’s house. It turned out to be very delicious and we had no complaints. Then we grabbed our bags and headed to the train station.

Shaun had been telling us all weekend about this big bear exhibit at the train station and kept saying we had to get there early so we could see it. The bear is the symbol of Berlin and is everywhere in the town crest. Every country of the world had a bear painted and on display in one large room. It was kind of creepy and yet kind of cool at the same time. Here’s Travis’ picture of the Bolivia bear.

We got on our train with minor problems, that being that the train was a “replacement” and not the train we had expected, which meant it was completely oversold and there were people laying in the aisles and sitting in the bathrooms. Every space inch of space was jam-packed. We weren’t even able to get up to our first class seats! But we did find seats, so it worked out ok, and afterward we complained at the ticket counter and they say they’re going to refund our money for that portion. Since we got such a good deal on first class (it was actually CHEAPER than second class) I’m not sure what will happen, but Travis thinks they’ll charge us The situation turned out ok - it could have been much worse!

We had a great weekend in Berlin and I’m glad we finally got to see the city before we leave.