Ich bin ein Berliner

So we arrived in Berlin yesterday afternoon after leaving beautiful Prague. We took the intercity train for about 5 hours to get here.

Some lovely countryside on the way and nice carriage companions. 2 Girls from Romania travelling to Copenhagen and a guy from South Africa off to Poland to compete in the world gold panning championships!
Was interesting to hear about Romania, and I was fascinated to hear their thoughts on communism although they admitted they were too young to really know the communist era and heard most of it from their parents and grandparents.
We were also fascinated to learn that there's a gold panning competition of any kind, apparently it's quite competitive. You're marked on time and lose time for missing pieces of gold. All the buckets are "seeded" so they know exactly how much gold there should be. We think we might google up the results at some point and see how he did.

Haven't seen much of Berlin yet but went for some dinner and Nell had roasted pork knuckle. We're staying near a place called Hackescher Markt which is very close to Alexander Platz and Potsdamer Platz, we can also see the TV Tower from outside the hotel although you could probably see it from anywhere in Germany, that was kind of its point. A big up yours from the East Germans to the Allies.

Hoping today to go check out some sights and see what Berlin has to offer.
Will keep you all posted and put up some photos once we have some.