Ich bin ein Berliner

SONY CENTRE, BERLIN: Day three in Berlin and both Kate and myself are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Outside it's snowing for the first time in about a week and we're warmly ensconsed in one corner of the Sony Centre. A technological and architectural marvel that houses a cinema where we've spent the last two evenings watching films. First Narnia and last night Jarhead. I know you're all saying what are you doing watching films when you're in Berlin but Kate has been hanging to see Narnia for forever and I've been waiting to check out Jarhead for even longer. I would definitely recommend Jarhead and Narnia was okay.

And as for Berlin... yesterday we did a walking tour of the city that took in the Brandenburg Gates, the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby, the carpark where Hitler's bunker used to stand, the Jewish memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, parts of The Wall, various cathedrals, a memorial to the famous Nazi book burning, a chocolate model of the Titanic, the Reichstag and several other sites. It's a strange place, in all the tourist areas you can buy tiny flecks of concrete marketed as the wall. Any old entrepeneur can go into business with a sledgehammer, a Besser brick and a can of spray paint.

Then last night we visited the Checkpoint Charlie museum which was wonderfully disorganised but full of all sorts of thrilling escape stories like the guys that flew a light airplane over the wall, a midget sub that delivered somebody halfway along the Baltic (he later patented it and made a fortune) and various hollowed out cars.

Today was a bit of a museum day and we visited the Pergammon first which includes a reconstruction of an Ancient Greek temple, the ceremonial way from Babylon as well as the stunning, sumptous and massive Ishtar gates which stood at the end of the ceremonial way. There were also various artefacts from around the Muslim world. It was really one of the finest collections of antiquities I have ever seen. Afterwards we visited another art gallery which had a nice Bonnard, some early Monet's and some fantastic German paintings. We finished up the day at the Picture Gallery looking at, you guessed it, more Brueghels. This last gallery is actually quite an incredible place and we're going back today or tomorrow on our jumbo tickets.

(ps. i have the sneaking suspicion this blog entry sucks but don't have time to re-edit it as am trying to find out about a cultural event involving nick hornby in berlin)