Yeah, that’s right. When you get to the most famous gate in the Berlin Wall, you see yet another iPad 2 ad.

Growing up in the Sixties, you sort-of assumed the Berlin Wall went up at the end of WW II. But that’s not true. It went up in 1961. There were several, about 11 I think, checkpoints along the wall where people could pass between East and West Berlin. The most famous of all is Checkpoint Charlie where Friedrichstrasse (our hotel is on this street) meets Zimmerstrasse. Checkpoint Charlie got its name because the West labeled the crossings with letters; and in military-talk, C is for Charlie. So yes, there were checkpoints Alpha, Bravo, Delta, etc.

The Wall was opened in 1989 and the two Germanys unified in 1990. When the Wall came down, so did the checkpoints. Now Checkpoint Charlie is a place marked by some signs, a museum and an outdoor exhibit that tells the story of the Wall and of Checkpoint Charlie. See the phone to above. And yes, a giant Apple ad.

The Wall itself is gone. You find pieces of it all over the city. Here is one from the front of our hotel:

Young people from the West painted the Wall with all sorts of graffiti. On the East, the population was kept from the wall by a “death strip”. I’m guessing there was not a lot of graffiti on that side.

Now if you go to locations where the Wall was, you find a cobblestone marker that follows the route of the wall, occasionally punctuated by plaques like this one:

Lastly, here is the famous sign over Checkpoint Charlie:

Our goal today was to see Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate. We did both, covering about 3.5 miles during three separate excursions between rain storms. (Not bad for a guy with a torn Achilles tendon!) When we were in Germany last it was cold and rainy. This time it is hot and rainy. Big improvement… I think.

Tomorrow, back in the car and off to a new country!