[Rick Lee]

Lots to do in Berlin, but pretty hard to get a feel for what it used to be like in the days of the Wall. The best (and most visited) museum in Berlin is the Checkpoint Charlie Museum on Kochstr., just in front of the old border crossing. Budget two hrs. for it and read everything there. Fascinating stuff.

Obviously, the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate must be seen and are hard to miss. They're a few hundred meters from each other. From there I'd make the long walk down Unter den Linden into the old East Berlin to Alexanderplatz. I haven't been to Alex in a while, but it was the crown jewel of the DDR and still has a bit of the vibe. There's a restaurant in the revolving tower there. Plenty of cool buildings and outdoor cafes to check out along the route.

Be sure to go to the Stasti Archive Museum and the Gestapo one too. Nothing left to see of Hitler's bunker and I don't think it's marked.

The local beer speciality is Berliner Weisse mit Schuss, which is a very dry beer with a shot of green or red syrup. The most famous place to get it is Cafe Kranzler on the KuDam. If you don't like it, Berliner Pilsener is pretty good and Radeberger is pretty common there, which is great.

If you drive to Berlin from western Germany, be sure to seek out one of the Grenzland Museums near the old inner-German border. They are fascinating, but can be tricky to find aside from the brown signs on the hwy.

And Potsdam is a gold mine. The Potsdam Conference was held in Cecilienhof, which is a must see. And there's Sansouci, Frederick the Great's old palace nearby. Charlottenburg is another cool palace in western Berlin.

I'm sure I'm leaving a ton of stuff out. It's a very big city and, even in the old days, you could spend a week in W. Berlin and never see the Wall.