Day 3 Berlin

   So cammy has been looking forward to seeing the sites of Berlin and for once was actually awake and in the shower before me ! Of course I had to make the coffee but it's great to be up and out the hotel nice and early for a full days site seeing , there's a subway right outside our hotel and Berlin has a fantastic public transport system ,we bought a day travel ticket each which was great value for money at  €6.90 we definitely scored with that pass even though nobody ever asked to see it and you were not required to show it going in or out a station ! First stop was Brandenburg gate ,my dad was station in Berlin in the 50s and my brother says there is a photo of him at Brandenburg gate in his uniform , I've seen a photo of him in his kilted uniform from those days but not with brandenburg gate ! I would have loved it if he was still alive to ask him what like this city was when he was there not long after the war with all the allied sections , even better I could have dragged him along on our road tour ! 

     It was a beautiful morning cloudless sky and sunny but very cold , Brandenburg gate was scenic but a bit like most modern European cities and so also was the reichstag , we wanted to see where the fuhrer bunker was and cammy had researched it before we left when we eventually found the site it was a bit of a disappointment , because basically it's only a car park now where once was this whole underground command centre , There was groups doing cycle tours walking tours and Segway tours I wanted to do one of these but cammy said no way am I doing that , next stop on our personal tour was checkpoint Charlie which I've been to before , it's very touristic but there's lots of interesting stuff to read and see we took some pictures and bought postcards with pieces of the wall in them to send to our mums , 

       By now we were hungry and had already seen a lot of stuff from our list of wants , thankfully cammy had done a fair bit of research and had a lot he wanted to see , so we had some brunch in a cafe and decided to look at the best areas to see the preserved Berlin Wall , we took the underground to nordbahnhof ( a very cool ghost station ) and got out to see some really well preserved sections of the wall , there's even a really cool viewing platform to look down on what used to be the walls and the watch towers plus no mans land , from there we went back to Alexanderplatz for a typical German lunch , in the centre of Alexanderplatz there was a mini Oktoberfest going on and we got beer and schnitzel spent the last of our euros , ate typical german food and beer spoke to some Aussie tourists ! After that we had to go back to the hotel to get cash ( we've spent a fortune for one day ) and some warmer clothes 

      We were only minuets at the hotel then back into the underground to make our way out to see the oberbaumbrucke ! ( the scenic bridge ) Berlin has almost 1000 bridges but this is the most scenic , we tried to have a beer and some dinner  near here But couldn't find a place that appealed to us both ,so we made the decision to head out to see kaiser willhielm memorial church it's a beautifully big gothic style church that the RAF bombed during the war , it has been preserved in its bombed state as a reminder of the devastation war causes , As we approached it the church bells rang out which added to the experience of the site , 

          It was approaching 7pm and we were losing delight and all the museums were shut so that ruled out the allies museum from this trip to berlinn ! But we did hopefully have time to see the Olympic stadium a few underground stops from where we were , The sun was setting right behind it as we approached from the station it was an impressive site for us in 2015 it must have made the German people really proud in the 1930's for the now famous Berlin Olympics , the Olympic Rings lit up as we took in the view the sun now gone the end of our daytime adventures , 

     Scotland where playing football against Gibraltar while Ireland were playing Poland and Germany were playing Georgia all in the same group for the Euro qualifiers ! Cammy loves his football that made the decision of where we were going now easy really , we knew where there was an Irish bar it would have the footy on and we got there just in time to get a beer and order some food before the 20:45 kick off , after the game we where still hungry so went to an old style German bar for some worst and sauerkraut supper