Day 238, 27 February 2013, Berlin, Germany. We started out the day with a bus trip on one of those hop on/hop off double deckers that have sprouted like mushrooms across the world. Turns out, rather like Paris, this was more like a hop on, have random 10 minute stop, drive through uninteresting neighbourhoods, have random 15 minute stop, drive past some embassies, put up with guide's woeful English, then hop off seething at two hours of your life you're never getting back type bus. If anyone cares enough to see me really get going, search for VVNsydney on TripAdvisor. In any event, we hopped off at Checkpoint Charlie and spent way longer than expected at the museum there. It was actually opened in 1963 shortly after The Wall was completed. It had amazing exhibits (people hid in petrol tanks, people hid in suitcases, people flying microlights, using ziplines and false passports and take apart ladders in shopping bags.) I was 17 in November 1989 and James was 24. The news made it to Australia and New Zealand - but I don't think the impact did. We were both fascinated that such atrocities and deprivation could have happened in our lifetime and yet schools were teaching English Tudor history and Europe was very distant from Australia. We could have spent much longer but 3 hours was the limit on our feet! We used the fearful double decker again - but only because we had day tickets and one arrived at the stop when we did. Headed to Berlin's amazing Museum Island and visited the Pergamon Museum. To think we were interested in the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum. The Pergamon was built with no other purpose other than to house the Pergamon Altar of Zeus (arguably the 'throne of Satan" 180-160 BC), the market gate of Miletus and the amazing, astonishing, we can't believe we saw it, Ishtar Gate of Babylon (575 BC). (Pictured from the internet - so big it was hard to fit it in!) Now, please don't get me wrong - these were not pieces, parts or samples of these massive antiquities. These were almost part and parcel, reconstructed, preserved and able to be walked through. We had one of those moments.... thinking we were lucky we never went to these places... only to find when we got there, there was no "there" there. (Because it was in a museum in Berlin....) The nature of Museum Island in Berlin is that you can leave one and enter another - and we had an hour before closing time, so we did. Our next stop was the Alte Nationalgalerie where we took in some Monets, a Van Gogh, a Rodin and Manet. And were instructed very seriously by the guard fellow that it really was closing at 1800 hrs and we MUST leave when the gong sounded. All in German. Getting very good at this. We wandered home under the railway line connecting Hachescher Markt and Alexanderplatz. Another 'wow' day - and to think tomorrow is what we've actually allocated to museums...