Day 4 - Tempelhof

A whole day in Berlin today, no driving. We used our feet and the U bahn to get around. This morning we played one of the live escape games at Exit Berlin. You are put into a room, and have to work as a team to solve multiple puzzles to escape. The location is perfect for it - an old DDR bunker - giving it a sinister feel before you've even started! The first time we tried one of these was last summer with the girls when we were last in Berlin and we've since done one in London. It's great fun, but quite stressful with just two of us to crack all the codes and clues. On this occasion we just failed the mission on the very last clue - we just couldn't quite pull everything together in time, great fun though.

We needed some air after the game so walked from Alexanderplatz down to the East Side gallery. Here a lengthy section of the former Berlin Wall is preserved, decorated by many street artists. We've visited twice before but it has rained heavily on us both times and we abandoned it for shelter. Today we were in bright sunshine so got a chance to walk the whole length and really enjoy the variety of art and messages they are trying to portray.

Then it was on to visit Tempelhof Airport and to do the guided tour (English language). It's an airport built to epic scale in the 1930s, meant to form part of Hitler's plan for a world-class capital called Germania, it was used as an airport until the 2000s and now lies fascinatingly empty. This is somewhere we've not visited previously but have been fascinated by. It has plenty of history, in WWII and subsequent times in the Cold War. Most famously perhaps it was scene of the mass Berlin airlift when Soviet authorities blocked other means of goods entering West Berlin in 1948/9. More recently (and following closure to commercial air traffic) there have been plans to redevelop the site but these were blocked by Berlin residents, and the site is being used as a huge park area with all sorts of creative outdoor activities taking place. The buildings remain (although their future is uncertain), with an oddly Marie Celeste feel when walking through them - complete with departure boards and baggage carousels. It was a fascinating visit and there is lots to learn about the airport and its history if you google it. Perhaps one of the most interesting facts we learnt today was that the roof was designed as an arena stadium, so that 100,000 people could watch spectacular air shows. Today's blip is a view of one half of the epic curve of buildings at the core of the airport: it is at a truly breathtaking scale. You can also see the weather coming in (as it did at various stages this afternoon). We saw a few drops of rain and even a little hail before the sunshine appeared again.

This evening we have had dinner in the revolving resaturant 207m above the city in the famous TV tower, probably my (Chris) favourite location in Berlin. We saw the sun go down and the city light up over the course of the 2 hours we were there. It's a location photographed thousands of times but I've popped a favourite up here on Flickr - just because!

I've just opened the pack for tomorrow, we're off to Poland!