Welcome to Berlin! 
In order to get an overview of this huge city, it's best to take the City Circle Bus Tour to get some sense of orientation. (That's why we usually do this on our second day of orientation.)
During summertime, buses drive around without tops -- magnificent views guaranteed!
All buses are equipped with headphones through which you get a guided tour covering virtually every point of interest in Berlin. Busstops are always close to the special sights you want to see - and you can get on and off as often as you want.
If you do the full circle without getting off at first, you'll be back where you started after 2 hours and will have gained a pretty good sense of what is where. Take a virtual tour below!
We start from "Alexanderplatz" which is the former center of east Berlin and major setting of Alfred Döblin's novel "Berlin Alexanderplatz". (right: Fernsehturm Ost)
We pass the Hackesche Höfe and the Museumsinsel (Pergamonmuseum, Alte Nationalgallerie, Neues Museum) before we arrive at the Dom (east).
On the Dom's right hand, you can still see the former "Palast
der Republik", former center of DDR-government. Due to asbestos, they couldn't take down the fassade as fast as they wanted. The future use of the building is still unclear.
From the top of the bus, you get a good view of the type of modern architecture mushrooming on the Potsdamer Platz.
The face of this place has been and still is rapidly changing. Just imagine -- when the wall split Berlin in two, this spot was nothing
but a barren space. From 1961 on, Berliners had kept refusing to do anything with it until after the wall would have come down.
Today the Potsdamer Platz attracts Berliners and tourists alike with three different IMAX-theaters, lots of little restaurants, and last but not least, a very specific atmosphere created by the glittering glass-fassades of adventurously shaped buildings towering over you without ever making you feel overpowered. From the futuristic sphere of the Potsdamer Platz, we reenter historical grounds when entering "Unter den Linden", the former "Prachtstraße" leading up to the Brandenburger Tor.
First we pass the "Staatsoper Unter den Linden" where we enjoyed performances of Mozart's Magic Flute and Richard Strauss' Salome.
Coming up on the same side are the Opernplatz and St.
Hedwig's Cathedral. It was righthere on Mai 10, 1933, when Erich Kästner witnessed a large crowd of Nazi-students, -professors
and -soldiers burn heaps of books by him and other writers (e.g. Thomas Mann und Kurt Tucholsky) considered to be Volksschädlinge" or "undeutsch" by the Nazi-Regime.
To this day, an empty bookshelf (underground) and a memorial plate remind us of what happens if hate-crime becomes the official state policy: "That was only the prelude. Only where they burn books, they will finally burn human beings. (Heinrich Heine, 1820)".
If you get off the bus at the memorial of Frederick the Great (whose castle Sanssouci we will visit on our second day) and walk down the middle lane of the beautiful boulevard, you can easily reach Checkpoint Charlie by taking a left on Friedrichstrasse and walk past newly designed shops and restaurants fiercely trying to compete with the flair of Kudamm (see below) and aspiring to become one of the major social centers of the new Berlin.
Or you lean back and pass through the Brandenburger Tor, which was blocked so many years . . .and follow us further on our exploration of Berlin (or go directly to the official Berlin-Webpage.)
If you stay on the bus it will take you back to the Kurfürstendamm, short "Kudamm." This fancy boulevard was the former center of "West-"Berlin. Berlin still does not have a curfew -- but if you want a hot meal for dinner, you should get it before midnight.
Exclusive stores, restaurants and hotels create a unique atmosphere on this never-sleeping avenue. Here you see the new "Kranzlereck", one of the most famous cafes on Kudamm.
This is a view of Kudamm from the restaurant on the top floor of the famous "KaDeWe" (Kaufhaus des Westens) towards the "Europa Center" and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis Kirche. The church was preserved in this state to make sure nobody ever would forget the horrors of war.
The KaDeWe has the reputation of selling "everything" there is to sell -- and it developed this reputation while West Berlin was still an "island" surrounded by the "DDR." Inside, everything is splendid, luxurious, every space as delicately decorated as every piece of merchandize exquisitely priced.
This spot in front of the Europacenter is the ideal place to taste the real "Berliner Kindl Weiße", which is very little beer with lots of red or green syrup (really...it tastes much much better than it sounds), while you enjoy the cool breeze evaporated by the "Wasserklops" or rather the "Weltkugel-brunnen" (on top you see the upper end of the "Lippenstift", close to the Kaiser-Wilhelm- Gedächtniskirche.)
If you are interested in a multi-media and three-dimensional overview of the history of Berlin, you shouldn't miss "The Story of Berlin", a multi-media exhibition which brings history to life in an entertaining way. It's located on Kudamm a little further down than the "Kranzlereck." After you have walked through the exhibition with headphones, you can take part in a guided tour through a bunker built in the 60s when the threat of the atomic bomb was answered by safety measures that would make you laugh if you could be sure that this threat won't gain actuality ever again. All images, courtesy of H.F. and J.B.