Wed 29 Jun: Jeremy and I wanted to go to Hackescher Höffe to rent bicycles. Usually, we walk down Parkstraße to the Albertinenstr. tram/bus stop on Berliner Alee and riding down Greifwaldstr. to Danziger where one switches from the ersatz bus to the tram to Alexanderplatz, where one can take the S-bahn to Hackescher Markt. Or we get off the bus at Greifwalder S-bahn stop and take the S-bahn to Schönehauser Alee where we catch the U2 to Alexanderplatz. But, by studying the maps, we jointly discovered that we could just walk down Amalienstr. cut through the lovely little park by the Weiße See to Berliner Alee and take a different tram to the Bornholmer S-Bahn station. where it's easy to get to the Friedrichstr. Bahnhof, and then then S-Bahn to Hacherscher Markt. There is just no easy way to get there from here.

Anyway, we got bikes and rode over to the Pergamon Museum on Museum Island where we rented audio guides and saw it all, including the namesake temple , the roman marketplace gate under reconstruction , the Gate of Istar , Babylonian codes , a special exhibit on Arabian culture , looked out the windows at the reconstruction of the "New" (Neues) Museum , the greek temple , and the various famous statues of antiquity.

I posed with the Egyptian statue outside , we bicycled past the newly restored Bode Museum , and I showed Jeremy an example of what east Berlin used to be filled with, an elaborate old building, just behind the Friedrichstr. Bhf., that has yet to be restored. . Then we rode over to see the restoration of Pariser Platz , for which traffic was completely halted through the Branderberg Gate. We stopped by the DG Bank with its famous internal sculpture over its conference center

We then stopped by the Sony Center in the Potsdamer Platz and watched the people. .

Then we rode over to the Martin Gropius Haus on the former Prinz-Abrecht-Str. and the site of the wall and the former Gestapo headquarters. . This exhibit, "Typography of Terror" is in a typical Berlin muddled state. There have always been remnants of the cellars along the streets. Previously, there was an exhibit of the entire block of Nazi organizations up on the hill of rubble from the destroyed buildings. Then that was closed and there was an exhibit in some excavated cellars. Then they were constructing a museum building. Then they closed the cellars and stopped construction on the building. But the expanded exhibits on the old street cellars is now fairly elaborate and takes an hour or so to go through.

We went by Goering's old air ministry where, like many buildings in Berlin during the 100th anniversary of Einstein's miracle year, there is a banner with one of his sayings: "In a democracy, everyone should be respected as a person, and no one should be deified.". Then we rode around at looked at some random pieces of municipal art , went by old Reichbank, which is now a part of the foreign ministry, and which, ironically, now includes a part of the Federal Bank, on our way to visit Oliver Günther, Agnes Vosaird, and their family. They live at Hausvogteiplatz and have a wonderful viw of the city. We had a nice dinner outdoors nearby but sadly, I was having such a good conversation that I neglected to take any pictures.

Then we took our new bicycles back on the U2 to Schönehauser S-bahnhof, then the S-Bahn to Greifwalder Str. S-bhf, and then rode back to the hotel for the night.