We visited the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower park in the East of Berlin. The huge scale of it is so enormous, quite remarkable. Recently it was restored and is absolutely pristine. It was very peaceful on the day that we were there which is fitting as it is the final resting place for many thousands. There was a little old lady there laying flowers with her family.
We had dinner with my family on a boat that is moored on the Havel River at the edge of the forest. It was lovely to look out as the sun set over the water and the hearty German food was pretty great too. I had Matjes Filets which is a herring dish. After dinner we went for a walk by the edge of the river as it was getting dark. So quiet and peaceful.
Berlin has a huge botanic garden, as well as fully stocked grounds it has really interesting glasshouses packed full of exotic plants. This was our second visit as we had really enjoyed visiting it a couple of years ago. More pictures here.
Something else unusual that we went to look at on a whim was the world's largest model railway here in the new Alex shopping mall. I normally have no interest in model railways bit it was so interesting looking at all the teeny tiny figures. They had organised them in such realistic groupings :) It is like looking at tilt shift or Where's Wally. The scale was 1:87. I took loads of pictures, there are more here.
Perhaps these are a bit different from what one might expect of pictures from Berlin, because we were visiting my family and they were so nice driving us around everywhere we got to go right out to the edges of Berlin. These are a sounder (a new word I learnt!) of wild boar we spotted as we were leaving the Grunewald Forest at dusk. Wild boar can get aggressive if you go near the piglets so we stayed in the car. You can understand why the cafe in the background has big strong gates to keep them out. We were quite excited to see them this close as they aren't common here in the wild in Britain. Obelix would have had a good time.
