Monday May 18….Jeff’s 52nd Birthday

Our 8AM departure commenced at 8:15…delayed an additional 5 minutes for Passport check. We have 450 miles to travel today to Berlin. Halfway thru the rush hour traffic to Utrecht, Mary discovered to her dismay that she had left her pillow which has not left her side for lo these 70 yrs and David refused to return. Oh, the joy!

Jeff entrained us with fun facts about Amsterdam and the Netherlands as be began our road trip to Berlin. For instance, Amsterdam had only 26 traffic deaths and 18 murders last yeast in this city of 750,000. Also, this population has 465,000 bicycles of which 54,000 are stolen in a year. When you get too old for a bicycle you buy a Smart Car. There were 100,000 Dutch Jews deported to concentration camps of which only 876 returned. Only 20% of the population of Amsterdam attend church. 60% of the population lives below sea level.

We stopped for gas which was approximately $8.00 per gallon. At 10 AM we crossed into Germany which has no speed limit. David floored it to about 90MPH…and many other cars passed us; At one time David was going 110MPH…it was a little scary and I opted to fasten my seat belt even in the back seat.

Our first tourist stop was at Xanten, Germany, where we saw the largest archeological open air museum in the country. Here we walked among the ruins of a walled city where 10,000 Romans lived in the 2nd century.

In order to clean our David’s refrigerator her packed ham and cheese sandwiches for us to eat in the car…this saved us some time for sure.

We had an impromptu stop at the Kaiser Wilhelm monument. He was the first emperor of Germany as he united all the German speaking areas into one country in 1871. It was a beautiful ride thru the forest to get up to the site of this giant monument that was built in 1892-96. It was his grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm 2nd that had the monument constructed. Wilhelm 2nd was the Kaiser during WWI.

We arrived in Berlin with a brief city tour driving into town starting with the former East German border crossing into West Berlin. We drove through the Tiergarten to the bombed out ruins of the Memorial Church. We then arrived at the Marriott where the bell boy got very excited over the quantity of luggage he had to bring to our rooms for a mere 5 euro tip. Checking in was no problem, thanks to Kelly Steward’s special arrangements. We have two rooms, each with two queen size beds overlooking the Potsdamer Platz right in the middle of the former “no man’s land” of the Berlin Wall. While unpacking Mary discovered she had not left her pillow after all…whew!

At Jeff’s request we picked a German beer hall for all the traditional German food, including Wiener schnitzel with white asparagus (Joy’s favorite) and Hunter sauce, sausages and dumplings…way more than we could devour! Of course David and Jeff pounded back a liter and a half of German beer each!

To walk that all off, we took a walk through the newly finished”Monument to the Murdered Jews”, which consists of 2711 stelae (marble slabs). These are on a rolling hill on the top of Hitler’s bunker where he killed himself. From there we proceeded to the Brandenburg Gate which was the symbol of the division of Germany. We saw the new American Embassy across the street from the new French Embassy as we stood in East Berlin looking through the gate to the West. After taking lots and lots of pictures we walked to the Reichstag, the German Parliament. This is the building that the Nazis burned down in 1933 to wrestle the reins of power from Hindenburg, while blaming it all on the communists. We did get back to the hotel right before dark. Tomorrow we plan a bus tour of Berlin…Happy birthday, Jeff!