I found this left over in my draft of entries. It is originally from September 2009 but is just getting published now. One of these days I'll put up all my Berlin pictures, which was the original purpose of this blog...
On Day 7 of the World Championships, there were no qualifying events at the stadium. The only morning event was the Men's 50k racewalk, which was on a course then went all throughout Berlin. So, with a morning free to do what I wanted, I went to Alexanderplatz (I guess you might compare it to a borough of NYC), a region of Berlin, where a tour company gave guided bike tours of the city in English.
Standing right below the TV tower, where the tour met. As you can see it was a much cloudier day than any other day I had in Germany up to that point. As I found out, you can count on it raining 300-350 days out of the year in Germany, so I got very lucky with the weather...this day was the only day that it rained out of the 11 days I was in Germany!
First stop on the tour. The guy sitting atop the fountain is Neptune.
A shot of the TV tower from far away. Funny story behind it. It's in East Berlin. When Germany divided and the wall first went up, the East Germans realized that all their best and brightest, like the architects and engineers, were defecting or just leaving. So by the late 60's, when they wanted to build a large symbol of East German engineering/architectural prowess, they had nobody to design and build it! So the East Germans actually hired a staff of Swedish engineers to design and oversee the construction of thier tower...and this was all done in secret, to make sure nobody knew that it was non-communist westerners that were designing this supposed "East German" tower.
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and myself. The guy on the left and guy in the middle were the founding fathers of modern Socialism and the authors of The Communist Manifesto. The guy on the right has yet to get into politics. This monument to those two is obviously in the East.
This big empty lot is actually a very historic site. This entire big empty lot used to be covered in one building...the Kaiser's palace. It eventually was abandoned and destroyed during/after WWI. Being in the East, the lot where the palace once stood became the grounds for East Germany's Parliament. After the wall fell, that building too, was destroyed. Now, there are plans to re-build the outside of the palace exactly as it once stood, but it will only be a facade...the inside will be a shopping mall.
THIS building used to be the horse stable to the palace!! If thats where the horses lived, imagine what the King's house was like!
This seemingly insignificant square was where a very sad moment in history happened. That building is a library, and in front of that library is where the Nazi book burnings took place. It is where German citizens were encouraged to burn books - burn any aspect of their own history - that didn't promote the Nazi agenda.
Its hard to see in this picture, but if you look close you can see some white lines through that glass. This glass covers a big hole in the middle of the sqare from the last picture. The white lines are actually empty shelves in a big room under the square. The shelves are supposed to be empty bookshelves, memorializing the books that were burned during the mass book burnings.
The Berlin Opera house. No exciting story behind this one.
Checkpoint Charlie. Originally a US military controlled checkpoint from when the Allies divided up Germany after WWII, it eventually became a border crossing between East and West Berlin once the wall went up. 
A close-up of what once was the gate stand.
There is an open-air exhibition at Checkpoint Charlie explaining its history, as well as the history of the wall and German communism. These are pictures of what Checkpoint Charlie used to look like, and another East-West gate.This, if you haven't guessed, is one of the last remaining sections of the Berlin Wall. I took a video because I wanted to show the entire thing, which I couldn't fit into a picture. It was interesting in that West Berlin was actually entirely encompassed deep within East Germany...so the wall was actually designed to keep the West Berliners in, on top of keeping East Germans from getting into West Berlin and once there, being able to travel to the west.
This is the last remaining guard tower. It used to be along the wall, but the section it guarded has been torn down, and it now sits on a city street, just another part of the landscape like a bus stop or fire hydrant.
Just a parking lot, right? Actually, its where Hitler's bunker was. Desperate to erase any painful memories of WWII, the Germans caved in and paved over Hitler's bunker, and simply put a parking lot over it, with no indication of what had once been there. Imagine parking your car before work every day, having no idea that your car was parked right above where Hitler killed himself before the Soviets conquered Berlin. It wasn't until the Soccer world cup in 2006 when Berlin officials, realizing they were going to get a huge influx of foreign visitors curious about WWII history, put up that sign in the picture, recognizing that this was the site of Hitler's bunker.
The Siegessaule, or Victory Tower, a memorial to the Franco-Prussian wars of the 1800's. The Prussians (who eventually became the Germans) were ultimately the victors of all their wars...thus, the statue on top of the tower is facing France, reminding the French that Germany won!
Berlin Hauptbanhauf, the main train station in Berlin. As you can see, Germans take their trains seriously, and train is a very significant way of travel in Germany and all throughout Europe. Inside this massive train station is everything you'd find in an American airport - restaurants, information booths, currency exchange stations, everything. Some of them even have little supermarkets where you can buy groceries!
Look familiar? It should. The tour took us back past the Reichstag. Now I can say I've been there twice.
One of the coolest parts of Berlin is Museum Island, which is literally just that...an island on a river that runs through Berlin which has 5 different museums on it. I didn't get to go into any of the museums, but this is a picture of the "Old Museum", a national history museum of sorts.
I don't remember what museum this was, but I know its the one that has something from Babylon in it...give me a break, I had a ton of information to try to absorb in one day. Someday I'll go back to Berlin and if you're still reading my blog by then, you'll find out all about all the museums on Museum Island.
My tour now done, I grabbed a Doner Kebap before heading over to the stadium. Its got all the same stuff thats in turkish pizza except its on a pita type thing, as you can see. Now guess what I'm incredibly hungry for. These things and turkish pizza were so good, I'd live in Berlin just so I could have them every day.
A group of Japanese fans outside the stadium that travelled to support their athletes!
Terrance Trammell and David Payne went 2-3 for the US in the Men's 110m hurdles!
On Day 7 of the World Championships, there were no qualifying events at the stadium. The only morning event was the Men's 50k racewalk, which was on a course then went all throughout Berlin. So, with a morning free to do what I wanted, I went to Alexanderplatz (I guess you might compare it to a borough of NYC), a region of Berlin, where a tour company gave guided bike tours of the city in English.
Standing right below the TV tower, where the tour met. As you can see it was a much cloudier day than any other day I had in Germany up to that point. As I found out, you can count on it raining 300-350 days out of the year in Germany, so I got very lucky with the weather...this day was the only day that it rained out of the 11 days I was in Germany!
First stop on the tour. The guy sitting atop the fountain is Neptune.
A shot of the TV tower from far away. Funny story behind it. It's in East Berlin. When Germany divided and the wall first went up, the East Germans realized that all their best and brightest, like the architects and engineers, were defecting or just leaving. So by the late 60's, when they wanted to build a large symbol of East German engineering/architectural prowess, they had nobody to design and build it! So the East Germans actually hired a staff of Swedish engineers to design and oversee the construction of thier tower...and this was all done in secret, to make sure nobody knew that it was non-communist westerners that were designing this supposed "East German" tower.So they snuck in the Swedes, had them design and build the tower, then snuck the Swedes out. When it was done, the East German government marvelled at "their" new symbol of East German power and intelligence. As I mentioned before, its often rainy and cloudy in Germany. So the East Germans were in for a surprise on the first sunny day they looked at their tower...the way the sun reflected off the big ball at the top shown a very distinct vertical line and horizontal line that apparently looks very much like a christian cross! This, of course, left the aetheistic East Germans very frustrated. Despite many attempts to renovate the dome, they never succeeded in getting rid of the cross that the sun reflected off of it. So, it was a tower built by Swedes that reflected a religious symbol off of itself. A great testament to East German engineering indeed.
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and myself. The guy on the left and guy in the middle were the founding fathers of modern Socialism and the authors of The Communist Manifesto. The guy on the right has yet to get into politics. This monument to those two is obviously in the East.
This big empty lot is actually a very historic site. This entire big empty lot used to be covered in one building...the Kaiser's palace. It eventually was abandoned and destroyed during/after WWI. Being in the East, the lot where the palace once stood became the grounds for East Germany's Parliament. After the wall fell, that building too, was destroyed. Now, there are plans to re-build the outside of the palace exactly as it once stood, but it will only be a facade...the inside will be a shopping mall.Its hard to give you an idea of how big this lot was, and how big the palace used to be. It was HUGE. To give you a better idea...
THIS building used to be the horse stable to the palace!! If thats where the horses lived, imagine what the King's house was like!
This seemingly insignificant square was where a very sad moment in history happened. That building is a library, and in front of that library is where the Nazi book burnings took place. It is where German citizens were encouraged to burn books - burn any aspect of their own history - that didn't promote the Nazi agenda.
Its hard to see in this picture, but if you look close you can see some white lines through that glass. This glass covers a big hole in the middle of the sqare from the last picture. The white lines are actually empty shelves in a big room under the square. The shelves are supposed to be empty bookshelves, memorializing the books that were burned during the mass book burnings.
The Berlin Opera house. No exciting story behind this one.
Checkpoint Charlie. Originally a US military controlled checkpoint from when the Allies divided up Germany after WWII, it eventually became a border crossing between East and West Berlin once the wall went up. 
A close-up of what once was the gate stand.
There is an open-air exhibition at Checkpoint Charlie explaining its history, as well as the history of the wall and German communism. These are pictures of what Checkpoint Charlie used to look like, and another East-West gate.The wall really went up overnight - in the course of one night, the East German military surround the entire city of West Berlin with high barb wire fences, guards, and attack dogs. People went to bed on a Saturday night, seeing nothing but a city out their window, and woke up on Sunday morning to see a wall being built. It was only a matter of time before the concrete wall was up, and West Berlin was completely surrounded for 28 years.
This is the last remaining guard tower. It used to be along the wall, but the section it guarded has been torn down, and it now sits on a city street, just another part of the landscape like a bus stop or fire hydrant.Imagine being a 20 year old German soldier, and being told "Go up into the guard tower. If you see someone trying to escape, shoot them. If you don't, we'll shoot you." This is while you spend hours at a time being able to see into the West. They put guards up there two at a time, so they could make sure the other guy wasn't planning to escape himself. In addition, you would never work with the same partner twice, so that you couldn't conspire with someone else to try to escape.
Just a parking lot, right? Actually, its where Hitler's bunker was. Desperate to erase any painful memories of WWII, the Germans caved in and paved over Hitler's bunker, and simply put a parking lot over it, with no indication of what had once been there. Imagine parking your car before work every day, having no idea that your car was parked right above where Hitler killed himself before the Soviets conquered Berlin. It wasn't until the Soccer world cup in 2006 when Berlin officials, realizing they were going to get a huge influx of foreign visitors curious about WWII history, put up that sign in the picture, recognizing that this was the site of Hitler's bunker.
The Siegessaule, or Victory Tower, a memorial to the Franco-Prussian wars of the 1800's. The Prussians (who eventually became the Germans) were ultimately the victors of all their wars...thus, the statue on top of the tower is facing France, reminding the French that Germany won!
Berlin Hauptbanhauf, the main train station in Berlin. As you can see, Germans take their trains seriously, and train is a very significant way of travel in Germany and all throughout Europe. Inside this massive train station is everything you'd find in an American airport - restaurants, information booths, currency exchange stations, everything. Some of them even have little supermarkets where you can buy groceries!
Look familiar? It should. The tour took us back past the Reichstag. Now I can say I've been there twice.
One of the coolest parts of Berlin is Museum Island, which is literally just that...an island on a river that runs through Berlin which has 5 different museums on it. I didn't get to go into any of the museums, but this is a picture of the "Old Museum", a national history museum of sorts.
I don't remember what museum this was, but I know its the one that has something from Babylon in it...give me a break, I had a ton of information to try to absorb in one day. Someday I'll go back to Berlin and if you're still reading my blog by then, you'll find out all about all the museums on Museum Island.
My tour now done, I grabbed a Doner Kebap before heading over to the stadium. Its got all the same stuff thats in turkish pizza except its on a pita type thing, as you can see. Now guess what I'm incredibly hungry for. These things and turkish pizza were so good, I'd live in Berlin just so I could have them every day.Evening Session
A group of Japanese fans outside the stadium that travelled to support their athletes!
Terrance Trammell and David Payne went 2-3 for the US in the Men's 110m hurdles!
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