Thu 30 Jun, we rode our bikes down to Greifwalder station and rode from Alexander Platz over to the Reichstag, stood in the short line for a while (fighting off some older linebreakers), got through security, rode the elevator up, walked up the now-famous spiral staircase, and admired Berlin from the roof.

Going out of the security area, I took a picture of a bunch of Bavarians, in full dress, who were coming in the scheduled group entrance. The security guard in the glass office inbetween perhaps thought I was taking a picture of her as she cheerfully reminded me that no pictures were allowed in this area.

Then we rode over to the emerging Lehrter Hauptbahnhof. The story here is that the Lehrter Stadtbahnhof used to be famous, and was mostly destroyed during and after the war. Now Berlin is building a new major North/South railway under the city and it will be joining the old East/West railway at a huge new railway station built on the site of the old station.

The real issue is what to call the new station. The compromise is supposed to be Berlin Hauptbahnhof - Lehrter Bahnhof in order to preserve the Lehrter name, and distinguish it from the former Hauptbahnhof that was in East Berlin and is now called the Berlin Ostbahnhof, and from the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Parkeisenbahn). But I notice the new signs don't say Lehrter.

I sadly watched them tear down the old building last year, but now I see that there was no room for it. We rode across a new street where a new bridge was closed for filming of a movie.

Then we bicyled over to the Straße des 17.Juli to see that, as we'd heard, it was closed to vehicular traffic all the way to the Siegessäule because of the Live8 Concert the next day.

Then we met up with Birgit who intended to take us to a nice German restaurant but it had been turned into a great restaurant of other ethnicity. And then we made our long way home again.