Germany -- Berlin, Day 1

Well, when we FINALLY arrived in Berlin after our overnight journey, I was happy to get my butt into the Novotel Tiergarten. Luckily they had rooms for us at the early hour we arrived, though mine was handicapped. Yea, the bathroom looked like a locker room. But the bed was just right.

It did lose points for two things: not having dry cleaning on the weekend (I was out of the office long enough to write that off!) and not having irons in the room. Having the CEO of a major company walking into the communal ironing room while you're preparing for your meetings that day is slightly embarrassing.

But, after a great nap, I decided to take a walk around the city. Luckily, we were in a great area for this since Tiergarten is a huge park where the royals of old did their hunting. It runs along the main road through Berlin straight from my hotel to the Brandenburg Gate. It was gorgeous.

The Victory Monument about
halfway through my walk:



















A view along my walk:















Of course, the funniest part for me was seeing the cars parked in the middle of the street just like in Philly!
















I wandered a bit by the Gate and took in the history of it all. It was an impressive monument and it was hard to believe the Reichstag was right there and the Berlin wall used to run just a few feet away.

The Brandenburg Gate:
















That night, my co-workers and I had a nice dinner at the Hofbrau House. It was great to sit outside for what ended up being the one warm day of my trip. I had my first Weiner Schnitzel (pronounced: veen-er shnitz-el) and it was delish. All in all, a good day.

Fun German word of the day: Punkt means "mobile"