It continues to be a bit of a whirlwind.

This morning, after a last delicious breakfast with our German family, we bid them farewell. It was incredibly touching that the little ones all also wanted to say goodbye to “their” Canadians.

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Manny and Helga drove is to the Verden train station, where we gots lots more hugs.

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Our train from Verden, via a quick change in Hannover, was set to arrive at Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof (main train station) around 1:30 p.m., after which we needed to buy S-Bahn tickets for the short transit to Friedrichstrasse Station and our almost adjacent hotel, the NH Collection Berlin Mitte.

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I spent the 90 minutes from Hannover (German spelling) to Berlin blogging using the free fast WIFI.

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There’s SO much that I want to share with our youngest son, in this place where the history of Germany comes alive.

There’s Museum Island and the Gendarmenmarkt, with buildings dating to the early 1700s; the Brandenburg Gate and Unter den Linden; the Reichstag and its spectacular night-time laser and light show summarizing Germany’s history: the Holocaust Memorial, Stolpersteine, the Tränenpalast, the remnants of the Berlin Wall, the Tiergarten and Victory Column.

And then there’s the food and drink associated especially with Berlin: red and green Berliner Kindl beer, currywurst, Buletten (fried meatballs), Kassler (smoked pork loin), Königsberger Klopse (meatballs with a golden egg and caper sauce) …and Döner kebabs! We also mustn’t forget “Berliner”, the gorgeously puffed yeast donuts that, strangely, here in Berlin are called “Pfannkuchen” (pan cakes).

Trying to do as much of that as possible in just 2-1/2 days meant some intensive pre-planning, which of course I absolutely love doing.

Today’s goal: Berlin’s New Synagogue, the Mauerpark (Berlin Wall Park), the Berlin Wall Memorial, and the Hackescher Markt, where we’d also have dinner. If we still have energy after that, we’ll make some detours en route back to our hotel. I seem to recall some interesting courtyards.

After dropping off our luggage, it was time to get some sightseeing done, as well as finding some lunch.

Our hotel is close not only to the Friedrichstrasse train station, but also to the Spree River and Berlin’s old Jewish quarter, so our route took us across the bridge and along the riverbank.

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Once in the Jewish quarter, we started seeing evidence of the terrors that were perpetrated here.

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As we turned the corner onto Oranienburg Street, we admired the old post office dominating the corner.

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The New Synagogue, which is now a Jewish Cultural Centre, was not open to the public today. This synagogue was burned by the Nazis during the concerted attacks on synagogues in November 1939 that became known as Kristallnacht, and then later bombed by the allies during air raids on Berlin. Only the facade and domes were restored to their original glory.

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Buildings here have complicated and convoluted histories. The Berlin Craftsmen’s Association building (below)was built in 1904-5 as a guild clubhouse, but became a hub for the labour movement and by the 1920s was hosting leftist revolutionaries. During WWII, forced labourers printed Nazi propaganda pamphlets there. During the post-war communist era it was used for theatre workshops, and now it is a major performing arts centre and event venue.

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We found our lunch stop at Café You’re Welcome”, which had a long interesting history itself.

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Full of Currywurst and beers (that’s Berliner Kindl rot/red/raspberry and grün/green/woodruff top left), plus a shared slice of pear streusel cake, we walked to the Berlin Wall Memorial and the Wall Park.

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Ted and I visited the park but not the memorial when we were here; today I realized what we had missed. There was an excellent short film about the events leading up to the building of the wall in 1961, the devastation it caused by isolating people, and its eventual fall in 1989. There were also video and audio clips of people who had lived their lives behind the wall, and of some of those who had escaped to the west. It really put the post-war human tragedy into perspective.

After our time in the memorial, we walked a bit further along Bernauer Street to an observation tower that allowed us to look down into the Wall Park, which comprises a section of the wall, which features a guard tower and a strip of the no-man’s land that was created between the inner and outer walls. The huge light standards ensured that the area was brightly lit 24/7.

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It’s all a bit unbelievable… until you actually see it. That’s why this trip was so important to me to make with our #2.

We were back to being hungry, so took a convoluted route to the Hackescher Markt area to allow us to admire some more of Berlin’s varied architecture.

Shortly after we sat down for drinks and tapas, the skies opened and it poured. Fortunately, we could wait it out, but many of the other restaurant patrons sitting under umbrellas near ours got pretty wet.

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Manchego cheese, Serrano ham, spicy chorizo, and bacon-wrapped dates provided our appetizer course. After the rain stopped we walked for about another hour before stopping to have salads at Ständige Vertretung, where we were able to sit along the river during a cloudy sunset.

That was enough walking that we were both tired enough to call it a day. I think #2 even managed to sleep through the frequent Saturday night sirens.

Tomorrow we’ll grab raincoats and umbrellas and continue our explorations.