Berlin; Thursday, 21 December, 2017

I had intended on having a nice long lie-in and getting a late breakfast, but the hotel was in the process of commissioning a new fire alarm system and they started the (very loud) tests a little after 8am, so I was forced to get up and have a noisy shower before heading down to breakfast.

After breakfast, and just about recovering my hearing, I headed out of the hotel and made my way towards Spandau the North West corner of the city.

Here is the Spandau Zitadelle, one of the oldest buildings in the city and a fine example of a Prussian fortress with it’s star bastions and tower. The site was used for arms manufacturing right up until the start of the 20th century and managed to survive the arrival of the Soviet soldiers in the city in the dying days of WWII by everyone assuming it was much better fortified and guarded than it was.

Today the site is undergoing major refurbishment with a walk around the walls partly completed and an interesting museum located in the main gatehouse, with a couple of other museums located in buildings around the site. The main museum links to the Julius tower – which dominated the site, and from the top of which there are excellent views over the fort to fully appreciate the shape of the bastions, and more importantly the natural sights of the Havel and Spree rivers joining – the main reason for a fortification being here in the first place.

I spent a long time looking round the fortress and by the time I left I was starting to feel quite hungry so I caught the train back into the centre of Berlin, getting off at Zoo station to visit the Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz to get some food and have a wander around. This market is located around the memorial church at the end of Kurfürstendamm and has an added poignancy as it was the location of the 2016 truck attack on Christmas market that killed a number of people. Around the memorial church a small display of photos of the victims and a large number of candles adds to the power of the memorial church.

Having taken in the Christmas Market I wandered back to Zoo station and picked up the number 100 bus to do a bit of free sightseeing from the top of a local bus past the Tiergarten and the Reichstag to Alexanderplatz where I wandered through the square and yet another Christmas Market.

I topped up the last of my Christmas shopping at this market before catching the tram back to my hotel to drop the shopping off and then headed back out into town for some dinner.