My original plan for today was to visit the Nue Nationalgalerie. Karen was to do her own thing today. After I had breaksfast and started figuring out my travel plan, I realized all galleries are closed on Mondays – so change in plan. Karen and I decided to visit the area around the Bundestag, walk through Tiergarten, visit KaDeWe and then go to the football game we had purchased tickets for last week. In the shot above is the Bundestag with its viewing dome on top. We had planned to go up there but the lineup was so long that we passed.
Below are some other shots from our day:
Above is Karen shooting me and me her as we arrived near the Bundestag.
We stopped for a snack on our way over to KaDeWe. As we sat outside this Cafe I was admiring the design of the hotel across the street and noticed this arrangement of elements. It took a few shots to get a bike rider in the frame properly.
We finally got to KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens or Department Store of the West). KaDeWe is a an 8 floor temple of consumerism. It’s one saving grace is that it has free washrooms – a rare commodity in Berlin. We had a coffee and some truffles.
We finally got to the game at the Olympiastadion, built originally for the 1936 Olympics. It is a beautiful facility – easy to get into and out of. The stadium wasn’t full but the crowd was amazing for a second tier team. In football terms it may have been a good game, but for an uninformed canuck, the 0-0 tie seemed to take forever to complete. The first shot above is of the end of the stadium where the home town fanatics stood, yelled, cheered, sang, waved flags, stamped, thumped and, I presume, drank copious quantities of beer, constantly throughout the game. The crowd was loud and boisterous, but I didn’t see any violence or unruly behaviour.
The second shot is of Karen and me sporting our Hertha BSC scarves that we had purchased at the Mauerpark Market yesterday.