Another great day in Berlin starts with a visit to the Checkpoint Charlie museum.

The famous checkpoint where diplomats crossed between East & West Berlin.

Amazing how creative the German people were when trying to get out of East Germany.  The museum is fun and makes the experience come alive, but there is an underlying sadness to it all – so much suffering as families were literally torn apart.

The Neues Museum is filled with amazing artifacts.

The highlight by far is the bust of Queen Nefertiti.  She is mesmerizing – Duke fell under her spell and had a hard time pulling himself away.  If you hear him talking about another woman he loves in Berlin, don’t worry, she has been dead for 3,346 years.

The Ishtar Gate of the ancient city of Babylon is literally on display at the Pergamon museum.

They also have an actual ceiling from the Alhambra in Spain – we thought something was missing when we visited a few years ago…

Finished the day with another excellent meal – this time at a Swabian restaurant in honor of Sigrun’s ancestry.

All of the beautiful museums pale in comparison to the living history that shared our table.  It’s one thing to see it in a museum, but something altogether different when someone who has lived through it brings it to life.  Harald blessed us with stories about how his family lived through the struggles of the separation of East and West Germany.  From memories of the bombings at the end of World War 2 to his family literally being on opposite sides of the wall the night it was put in place, we are thankful that he was willing to share – although his story has a dose of sadness, it is a story of hope and inspiration.  Thank you for your special gift Harald.

When Ralf stayed with us for a year in Solon, Ohio, he was a West German and a wall separated him from East Germany.  Before 1989 was over, the wall came down and now, Ralf is a German – history in our lifetime.  I learned about all of this in school, read about it in newspapers, and watched it on TV, but not until we visited in person did I truly appreciate what it meant for the wall to come down – we waited too long, but I am so glad we made the trip.