I'm writing all this on the same day but splitting it up so that I can add each country separately.
Next destination was Germany. We docked at Warnemunde which is about 2 - 3 hours by train from Berlin. I know because the ship hired a train and took us all there.
I've been to Berlin before, four years ago. And a weird thing happened. In 2005 I was about to photograph a statue when the camera battery ran out. I didn't have a spare, so I was unable to photograph a lot of what I saw, including the wall and Checkpoint Charlie. This time I went to photograph the same statue and the camera said "Battery Depleted". The SAME statue! But I've learned my lesson so I now carry spares.
This time we spent most of our time in the former Eastern part of the city and the buildings there are really spctacular. We did visit the remains of the Wall - now called the East Side Gallery as they left some of the wall and invited artists to paint on it. I noticed that Berlin has a serious graffiti problem as obviously people now think that any and every wall should also be painted. Luckily noone seems to deface the actual buildings or monuments.
To my amusement Checkpoint Charlie now has a "pretend" American soldier on duty - with a very thick German accent, and he charges 10 Euros to have your photo taken with him. And the stalls around sell Russian and American Army hats and other "mementos". Ah, the tourist industry!
