TV Towers and Book Burning

Today more than made up for yesterday's excursion. We saw A LOT, so I'll try not to dwell.

TV Tower

We started our trip to Alexander Platz, made famous in a little movie called "The Bourne Identity." ("Berlin? I was never in Berlin!") These days, it's filled with a large installation commemorating the 10-year anniversary of Germany's reunification. Nice, busy square ... moving on.

In one corner of this platz stands the TV Tower (Fernsehturm) which you can spot from anywhere in the city. Visitors can go up into the tower, have a nosh and see for miles -- the silver globe takes one hour to turn a full circle. With a small fear of heights and no reason to ascend, we continued on.

Leah with her King

On the other side of the square is Neptune's Fountain. Leah liked this fountain and made sure to ask King Neptune how Ariel was doing. Next door was Marienkirche, a lovely church which has stood in this spot since 1280 -- though, as you can now assume, it's been rebuilt several times.

Unter Den Linden is the Champs Elysees of Berlin, so that was my next destination. It's a long street that starts at Berliner Dom and continues to Brandenburg Gate and the big park called Tiergarten. I only made it a few blocks, when I fell immediately in love with Bebelplatz -- a square filled with Neo-classic architecture gems.

In Bebelplatz, The Old Library is
getting a facelift 

Interesting story about Bebelplatz: The Nazis burnt more than 25,000 books in this square by authors who were considered enemies of the Third Reich. (The horror!) There now stands a memorial to this event -- a glass square in the ground looks into a room with an empty bookcase and a light bulb. It's quite striking.

Booksellers in Bebelplatz

The best part of this story is that just across the street from this square, in front of Humboldt (teehee) University, there are several book peddlers. Score one for books!

From Bebelplatz, it's just a block to our favorite place section of town -- Gendarmenmarkt -- for lunch in one of the food courts (they're fast and kid-friendly). And back to the apartment for "quiet time." Or the game known as "beg the kids to nap."

The afternoon was spent at the local playground which is part of my new strategy: They spend the morning seeing stuff that I want to see -- I spend the afternoon at a playground watching them run around -- and Alice boss around German kids twice her size.