Last full day in Berlin & for the first time in 3 weeks we woke to light rain. However most of our planned sight seeing has been done but for 2 places, Check Point Charlie & Ka De We (what is that you may well ask!). Firstly we walked 15 minutes to Check Point Charlie giving our well travelled umbrella an outing. The museum at CPC covers the years of the Berlin Wall - 1961 to 1989 - showing the political events, inventive & dangerous methods of escape & attempted escape from East Berlin to West Berlin. It also included information about efforts to get many Jews out of Germany during the war (ie well before the Wall was started in 1961). Over 5,000 people managed to escape East Berlin after 1961, whether over ground, underground, by water, underwater or even through the air. CPC is the spot where America controlled a gate to & from West Berlin. The museum was a lot to absorb but well worth seeing.
Our next stop was Ka De We which are the initials of a very large, somewhat luxurious department store. We strolled around looking at products from all over the world; bought a couple! Then had lunch before taking our shopping back to the hotel. We are finding the rail system wonderfully efficient in Berlin. After a short refresh we went out again catching the train to Brandenberg Gate. We had only seen this are in a rush & decided to have a closer look at it. Then back to the hotel but first we checked out some ruins across the road & discovered they were from a former railway station which was used during the war to send 96,000 Jews to concentration camps in Poland. This was 1 of a few main departure points in Berlin. So this was the former site of the station we had been using in the last few days! Very sobering.
