Berlin

The free walking tours in these cities are great.  There is so much history here and at the same time so much change.  It's crazy to think that a wall divided east berlin from the rest of the world just 17 years ago.  There isn't too much left of the wall these days.  It sounds like many people have attacked it and tried to bring the last remaining pieces down.  We saw the old and the new of the city on our tour.  Starting with Prussia and the somewhat golden building age of the city.  Then moving on to WWI and WWII seeing the old Nazi air force building (one of the largest in Berlin) and the place where hitler died, which is now a parking lot, by the way (very appropriate I think).  Next, we saw the Cold War's effect on Berlin with Checkpoint Charlie and The Wall.  Walking through Berlin now it seems that you get small pieces of history in a city that has been almost completely rebuilt from the ground up.  With history like this, who can blame them.  Some of the structures are architectural marvels but some make no sense at all.  The city, for some reason, decided to demolish a palace to build a different one literally in the parking lot next to it!  A multi-billion dollar project in a poor city, hmm.  Anyway, it was interesting to get an inside perspective on and ever-changing place.