We arrived in Berlin yesterday evening and were met by an extraordinarily polite driver to take us to our hotel.  He gave us a flavor of the history of Berlin, which of course is best known for "The Wall".  As a born and bread West Berliner, he had some strong (but still polite) opinions of how the wall coming down has changed Berlin.  Even though the fall of the Berlin wall was a moment of great positive moment in history and represented to some the fall of communism, it seems that in Berlin it had a negative impact.  According to our driver, there is still a great deal of distrust between East and West Berliners.  The influx of people willing to receive lower wages has changed the financial climate of Berlin meaning that many young people are trying to move away after studying in the city.

I haven't seen the remains of the wall yet but we did drive past a church bombed during World War 2.  For me, that really brought home how terrible war is and how lucky I am that I've never lived somewhere in active conflict.  Seeing what I expect was once a magnificent building as an empty, broken shell was most sobering.

After settling into our hotel and freshening up from the long journey, Robert, Sean and I set off in search of food.  Unfortunately for Sean and Robert, I happened to switch on the TV and discover that there were Football/Soccer World Cup qualifiers being played across Europe so I diverted us to an Irish Pub in Europa Center.  How is it you can ALWAYS find an Irish Pub?  We caught the second half of Eire vs Israel which was quite a match.  Lots of theatrics from the Israeli goal keeper to waste time which backfired somewhat when the 4th official awarded 7 minutes of extra time - I think I once saw 8 minutes but 7 is extraordinarily unusual.

After the football, we set out to find some food.  We settled on Italian.