A weekend in Berlin
We arrived in Berlin with great expectations as it was a city that we had both been looking forward to for some time and it certainly didn't disappoint. To make us feel at home it even went to the trouble of closing most of the S Bahn and carrying out engineering works on the U Bahn over the weekend. It felt like being on the Victoria line.

On Saturday we took part in a guided walking tour around the city. 4 hours later we had walked the main city sites and learnt a lot along the way - our guide certainly found her own jokes funny, despite the deathly silence around her. That said, it was a great way to see a city of so much history and her grand finale of how the wall fell (the 'greatest mistake in history') was fascinating. Other highlights included the newish Jewish memorial costing the best part of €27 million and the simple memorial to the Nazi book burning. Understandably, Berlin is a city which is not short on memorials.
Sunday saw us heading to Sachsenhausen, the 'model' Nazi concentration camp just outside the city. Unsurprisingly it was a depressing afternoon.
That evening, in fantastic contrast, we headed to the Reichstag. An awe inspiring building, made even more impressive by the world renowned glass dome. The sight of the modern encased in the original building is quite something. As sun set we had some impressive views over the city.
As an aside, Sunday was also the day of the Berlin marathon, explaining why we'd found it a little difficult to book accommodation and why public transport was so busy…with a number of people running off the metro with numbers pinned to their chests…
Monday was our final day before we left on the night train to Gdansk. After some wandering around West Berlin, which we hadn't really seen, we headed to the Jewish Museum. While the exhibition, charting Jewish history in Germany from the 13th century was fascinating in itself, the building, designed by Daniel Liebeskind was particularly impressive.
A modern building, clad in aluminium sits next to a more traditional museum building, though the 2 can only be reached underground from one to the other. The new building has a number of architectural features designed to make the visitor think about the subject, including a number of deliberately empty spaces or 'voids' to represent the gaps in German society left by the Jews.
The sights and history of Berlin really only tell a small part of our stay. It's a fantastically vibrant city brimming with bars, restaurants and cafes. This made it a great place to spend 3 days and we'll definitely be back.
Now onto Gdansk with the night train.

David's abridged version:

Berlin is brilliant…its certainly better than Bonn