Checkpoint Charlie, Speeding Germans and an Unexpected City on our Itinerary

Well, the good news is that we slept great and the bad news is that Tita called and thought that her replacement flight had now been cancelled.  The best news is that after a lot of time spent at the airport trying to work things out, United got her on a flight out of Atlanta that will arrive in Frankfurt on Sunday morning.  While this will mean a change of itinerary, it will be well worth it and so we are now not heading to Czechoslovakia and Poland as thought but instead to central Germany and Frankfurt.  This will simply mean a change of venue for our concentration camp tour and a couple of more changes.

So, confident that we will be now be joined by our fourth adventurer, we set out to see Berlin.

We were so close to almost everything we wanted to see in Berlin that it didn`t take us long to be out in the mix.  Our first stop was checkpoint charlie.  This was the place where everyone who wanted to travel from West Berlin to East Berlin, or East to West, during the cold war had to pass through.  According to history, this was a very tense place and was not traversed easily.  They still have the guard house set up there and a MP who is only there these days for entertainment value.  But it worked for us.  We stood in line to have our passports stamped with historic East German and West German stamps as well as the stamp used by the US when they controlled the west side of this checkpoint.

Afterwards, we traveled to where the Third Reich was housed, to the remains of the Berlin Wall, to Brandenburg gate and to the monument to the Jewish lives lost as a result of the holocaust.  Even though this area is now quite  "touristy", once you are able to get your mind past the graffiti, the souvenir shops and the buskers, and you really think about this important time in not only Europe history, but the history of the world, there is a great deal of significance in all we saw.

It was especially interesting to experience this with two women who, though young at the time, had memories of the world during these years.  They had stories about people they had known and family members who had spent time in Germany and how that affected their lives.

Also interesting is the obvious contradictions in the architecture, not only in side by side buildings, but sometimes in single buildings.  It was obvious that parts of this city had been rebuilt have being ravaged in the war, but we were surprised at some of the old buildings that had survived.  We all liked the idea that perhaps some of the most historic sites were saved because of wisdom of the Allies leadership.

I imagine we could have spent several days exploring the museums and historic sites, but we had to head out in the early afternoon, we had miles to travel to get to Frankfurt so we could pick up Tita.

So....off we went, this time travelling on a legit part of the Autobahn.  We knew it was legit because of the change in traffic patterns.  We were certainly in a car that could hold its own we thought and I felt pretty confident zipping along at 150 TO 160 kmh....which translates to 95ish mph.  Well I felt confident until the first car flew by us at such a fast rate that it actually startled us.  So fast that it blew one of my contacts right out of my eye.  It could have been the fact that I blinked so fast when the car went by that I knocked out the contact, but it sounds so much better to have the contact blown out by the speeding car.

All in all, the autobahn was all it is cracked up to be, and though I was finally driving a respectable 100 to 110 mph, I definitely had to keep in the slow lane!

While holding my own on the autobahn, I am not doing so well at the redlights.  It seems I can´t get the hang of stopping far enough back to see the correct light and react to the pedestrian light instead of the automobile light.....which look very similar.  Thusly, we have assigned to Joyce the job of watching lights. I am happy to report she is keeping me out of trouble.

Today was relatively free from mishap and mayhem,......two roadside potty stops, a slight issue at a gas station, several run red lights and some difficulty finding a place to eat on a Saturday night in the trendy section of Frankfurt that was suited to three road weary travelers in UGGS......we call this a SUCCESS.

Tomorrow we pick up Tita!!!!  YAY!!!