In honour of a special birthday we visited Berlin Jan.22-28, 2006.

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision facilitated by using Aeroplan points for travel and the Internet to find accommodation and plan the trip rapidly. Because of the off season, we were able to find Louisa's Place (a wonderful place to stay for a great price) and travel business class on Lufthansa through all legs of the trip both going and returning.

Why Berlin? Well, Peter is a 20th century history buff and Berlin has plenty of history. From my perspective, I'd visited Berlin long ago and many of the mystery novels I love to read are set in Berlin. I'd taken a German course in university long ago and more recently a conversational German course just for fun. When Peter picked Berlin as his birthday city, I was delighted.

Berlin is a huge city, many times the size of Paris, and one of Europe's most visited. See this concise city portrait.

We flew Edmonton-->Vancouver--> Frankfurt--> Berlin. Going to Vancouver was going backwards but flying business class on points requires some compromises. On the plus side, we'd rather have a stop in Vancouver than Toronto any day! The downside was that stopovers in Vancouver and Frankfurt produced a long, tiring journey.

In 5 days we got a good flavour of modern Berlin. Besides the architecture, sounds, and tastes, the places we saw and visited included

• Berlin Film Museum with its Marlene Dietrich Collection (Sony Centre, Potsdamer Platz)

• Jewish Museum

• Department stores: Wertheim, Ka De We, Arkaden

• Brandenburger Tor

• Checkpoint Charlie (what's left of it)

• Reichstag

• Famous streets: Unter den Linden and Kurfürstendamm

• Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (Gedaechtniskirche)

These days, when travelling, we like to soak up the ambiance of a place, enjoy the passing panorama, and people watch. One of our biggest joys is to imagine all of the historical figures who have walked in the very same steps that we are now treading.  In Berlin's case, besides Hitler and his Nazi cronies, that could be the Grimm brothers, Albert Einstein, Marlene Dietrich, Billy Wilder, Friedrich Hegel, and so many more.

All of our recent trips seem to include something special to remember. This trip was notable for celebrating Peter's birthday and the value-added was his unexpected trip to the Martin Luther Krankenhaus (hospital).

The travelogues on this site document a few of the many experiences we had in Berlin. As with all travel, our  impressions are personal and may not jive with the experiences of others. We are recording them here as an online diary that we can return to again and again to relive these happy times.