March 9, 2007
Our last day in Berlin. I woke up as usual at 0700. Alyssa always comments on how I have a great internal clock that I wake up at about the same time each day. I say it is that I don’t want to miss anything. I let her sleep until 0830 this morning since we would need to kill time today, what a mistake. The school kids ate everything and when we went to breakfast at 0930 most of the good food was gone. It just goes to show that you must get up early in the morning to start the day right.

Left the hotel around 1030 and headed into the city. We first caught the S-bahn to the Central Train Station and dropped off our luggage. I did not put my back pack in the luggage area as it had the laptop. After that we headed for the Victory Column. We took the S-bahn so far and then walked along the 17th of Juli street. I always liked the way the street is laid out and you can see all the way to the Brandenburg gate and back the opposite way. When we got to the column we climbed up the 285 stairs to the top for the view. Again I wondered what a 47 year old man is doing climbing up stuff like this, but I do love it and love traveling and seeing these things. I made it to the top with only one heart attack along the way. View from the top fabulous. I had not been up in years and was well worth the heart attack.

When we got down I wanted to show Alyssa the Soviet War Memorial and the Reichstag since she said she had not seen them the last time she was here. I also want to give her a bit of a history lesson as these things may not seem important now, but when you talk with people about traveling you need to know a little so you don’t sound stupid. We started walking and instead of ending up where I wanted to, we managed to come up behind Schloss Belview and then decided to take the bus down to the Zoo and have lunch at the KaDeWe. We ate up at the top of the KaDeWe and then Alyssa wanted to take a walk down the Ku’damm and we did. Toward the end of the Ku’damm we stopped for a cup of tea at the Mercedes dealership and then caught a bus down to the internet café and called Lorene and checked mail.

March 10, 2007

We finally started back again for the Reichstag and the Soviet War Memorial. We had a nice, at least I thought it was nice walk through the Tiergarten and ended up at the Central Train Station. Had dinner and caught the train to Koln then a connection to Frankfurt and home. I am writing this now as the train is traveling (according to the screen in the train car) at 249 kph. I think that translates to 149.67 mph. It is 2210 and the train is to gets in to Koln at 0214 and then a 2 hour wait for the train to the Frankfurt airport. Made it to Koln and sat in a small eating area in the train station along with the other stranded and waiting passengers. Lots of stories the could be told by the people here. Caught the train for the airport.

Frankfurt airport, made it in on time which was 533 in the morning. I wanted to get in early and thought it would be a good idea and then found out we had to wait until the counter for the airline opened at 0615. While we were in this screwed up and I mean Screwed up line, met a couple of Army guys on their mid tour leave from Kosovo. They did not speak to highly of the tour. Many more problems then are reported in the news. We spoke for a good 45 mins very nice guys. When they got up to the front of the line one of them found out just like another had earlier that he did not need to be in the line and no one told him, so he wasted a lot of time. Nice guys wishing them all the best when they go back in two weeks.

Very uneventful flight slept part of it and thank God for Bose headphones. I am not sure what I have done on all these plane flights without them. Help you sleep and truly make the flight much better.

Home again and Lorene met us. Lorene and I went for sushi and Alyssa made it known to all her friends that she is home. Till next time, me.