What an interesting place is Berlin.  We flew to Berlin from Dublin on 25 September. We had a lovely apartment in what was the old East Berlin.  So many apartments, very old school looking but all done out inside.  On our first day we walked to the Brandenburg gate and to the Reichstag(?) building.  We also checked out the marathon course.  Everything in Berlin is huge, huge buildings, everything is huge.

on our second day we got a train out to Sachsenhausen, the concentration camp.  We did a tour with that trip and our guide was brilliant, she had completed a degree in war history and knew everything about Sachsenhausen.  We went out on the same railway tracks as the prisoners used, walked along the same road through the town of Orianenburg that the prisoners were marched, and then through the camp.  The tour around the camp was very sobering as we heard about the atrocities that were carried out.  I felt quite sick after a while, and it stayed with me for a few days.

When we got back that day we got a train and went and saw the stretch of the Berlin Wall that is left. It was great to see.  Street art on each slab of concrete for about one kilometre.

The next day was the marathon and it was a glorious day, although a bit too glorious for the poor runners.  It was about 25 degrees.  41,000 runners, and the world record was broken by a Kenyan – 2 hours 2 minutes for 42km – unbelievable.  While we were waiting for Justin and Rachael to come through we went down and looked at checkpoint Charlie.

We found the Berlin rail system very confusing, so thank goodness we had Rachael’s sister Rebecca with us, as she had been there before and knew her way around.

Justin did the marathon in 3 hours 36 minutes and Rachael did it in 4 hours 06 minutes.  Great effort as they were sick with head colds right up to and including the day of the run.

We loved Berlin, it is so so different to anywhere else we have been.

We had packed our stuff earlier that morning and dropped it at the railway station, so we all met up there after the marathon, trained out to the airport and flew to Rome.

I have given up trying and failing to add photos to my blog, so I have sent some photos separately to Shannon’s email.  I will bore you silly with the rest when I get home