We finished up strongly in Brussels, doing some sightseeing, trying the local food (mussels with pommes frites – interesting combination) and going back to the 2000 beer bar to order our favorites again. Monday was a long travel day, with a 2 hour train ride to Cologne and then a 5.5 hour ride from there to Berlin. I personally was in Berlin about 2 weeks ago while my mom and sister were still here, but Darryl and I needed some filler stops before any rooms became available in Paris next week, so we figured it would be a good couple of days. We took a cheapo walking tour which was actually really good. It brought us to all of the former Nazi sights in the city, including the former Gestapo headquarters, the former Luftwaffe headquarters, memorials to the various groups persecuted during the Holocaust, Hitler’s final bunker site, and more. We went to a biergarten at night and enojoyed a few brews from Munich. The next day we rented bikes and went to the Gestapo museum and then to the Berlin Zoo, which apparently has the largest number of species of any zoo in a major city in the world. The real star of that day, though, was dinner. We had an awesome tapas meal for a pretty reasonable price. If the tapas in Berlin were that good, I can’t imagine what they’ll be like in Spain. One last thing about Berlin: the hostel we stayed in was actually friggin awesome. For future reference, it’s called Baxpax Downtown Berlin – very clean, modern, safe, and friendly staff. Cheap drinks at the bar too. 
After our short stay in Berlin, we took the train to Düsseldorf, along the Rhine River in Germany, where we are now. I have to say it’s definitively not tourist-y here and it’s been refreshing. Things are relatively affordable. There isn’t all that much to do, but it’s been nice to take the time to do laundry and reorganize a bit before we head off to Paris tomorrow. We’re anticipating everything in Paris being über expensive, so we’ve been eating as well as we can and preparing for the worst. Last night we went to a Mongolian place that featured zebra, kangaroo, crocodile, antelope, and ostrich on it’s menu (obviously we tried them all, it was all you can eat). Then we went to Altstadt, which has the reputation as “the world’s longest bar” (it’s actually 500+ separate bars, but it’s all good) to have a few drinks and explore a bit. Today after our laundry we went to the top of the TV tower along the Rhine for the view, then back to Altstadt for dinner. We’re definitely looking forward to the city of lights tomorrow though.
I think overall, so far, Germany has been my favorite country. Of course the heavy hitters, France and Spain, are coming up next, but it’s just pleasant to be in Germany. The people readily admit and acknowledge their past and ensure that their children learn from their previous mistakes. The infrastructure here is simply amazing also. I’m actually jaded to the fact that we can sit on the train and cruise at 250+ km/hr (155 mi/hr+) like it’s nothing and that the trains actually run on time. The autobahn is also one of the safest roads in the world, in spite of the fact that there are some sections with no speed limit. It’s amazing what decent, well maintained infrastructure can do, as opposed to what we have in the States. On a side, according to our tour guide, contrary to popular belief, the autobahn was not a Nazi-conceived project. Rather, it was conceived and planned during the years of the Democratic Weimar republic, and the concept was hijacked by the Nazi political machine after their takeover as part of its public relations/economic recovery push in the early to mid 30’s. In fact, many of the welfare and recover plans were already in place during the Weimar years, but were inherited by the Nazi government, which took credit for everything. It’s interesting to think what might have happened had the Weimar Republic been given 10 more years to help Germany recover before being challenged by National Socialism.
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