Potsdam

Our final full day in Berlin also happened to be Tina's birthday. We started out the day having no idea what to do. Eventually, we decided we would go see the palace at Potsdam. First, we found breakfast. We celebrated Tina's birthday with chocolate muffins.




Then we used the U-Bahn, and S-Bahn to make our way to Potsdam. The rainy weather made it a little unpleasant to be out and about. In fact, once we got to the Potsdam train station, we didn't exactly know how to get to the palace. We puzzled it together a little bit, but by that time it was going to be a while before the right bus came. Combined with the rain, we decided to cut our Potsdam trek short, and headed back to Berlin. So basically, we went to Potsdam, and got a little thing of gelatto.

We decided instead to go and see some of the actual Berlin wall. There used to be kilometers of it, but now it seems like there is only really a couple of city blocks worth. At least that's all we found. Apparently there is more, but somewhere else.



While there, we also took in some of a public display called "the Topography of Terror", chronicling the rise of the Nazis, and then the cold war era in Germany.



Later, we met Carina and Mark, and a friend of Mark's at a pub for dinner and drinks. It was a nice night and a decent way to wrap up our trip.





We did not stay out too late as we had to get going early in the morning. We had a train ride to Frankfurt, followed by a flight to Vancouver, and then to Victoria. This turned out to be the longest day in my life. The sun was up from the time we left Berlin at like 7am Berlin time, until after we arrived home in Victoria, probably around 10ish Victoria time. This was all thanks to flying westerly, over the polar route, on the second longest day of the year.

Our view of Baffin Island,



and the Fraser River in Vancouver.