This morning, we wore our newly-cleaned clothes to breakfast. Even though the hostel has three rooms for people to sit in and eat, there was no escaping the smoke. The clothes we’d put so much time and energy into cleaning last night came out reeking of cigarettes.

Today is our day to see Berlin, starting with The Berlin Wall. When The Wall got torn down in 1989, they left one kilometer of it to stand as a monument, and that stretch was a short walk from the hostel. We walked along this endless slab of flat grey concrete. It’s about 10 feet high and a foot thick with several layers of graffiti from the past 40 years.

Near the end there’s a few hundred meters of wall that was recently rebuilt as a “canvas” for dozens of murals expressing the joy of liberation in many different ways.

From there we went to Ostbahnhof, and bought 24-hour transit passes for 12 marks (about $5) each. These are good on the S-bahn (kind of like the “El” in Chicago), the U-bahn (underground), trams, and buses … not a bad deal.

Our map shows a sprawling park west of the Brandenburg Gate, and we’d received a recommendation to climb Victory Tower. This tower is a landmark that sits at the center of a traffic circle in the middle of the park.

We took the S-Bahn to the Bellevue station, which is on the south shore of the Spree River in Tiergarten park. A footbridge connects the station and the park to neighborhoods across the river.

A short walk through a thin but deep forest brought us to a tea house and an English garden. Rozie noticed a woman gathering ginkgo leaves and they got involved in a pleasant but linguistically-clumsy conversation about things to do with ginkgo leaves.

We popped out of the forest to the side of a busy street, and saw the Victory Tower rising from the center of a four-lane roundabout. Fortunately, there is a network of pedestrian tunnels that provide access to the tower, and safe crossing from one side of the roundabout to the other.

Around the base of the tower are a series of bronze reliefs. We also noticed the bullet holes in the marble, battle scars from the second world war. We checked out the tile mosaic girdling the lower parts of the tower before we found a door and went inside.

For two marks each we were allowed to climb a long spiral staircase through the inside of the tower. The view from the top is worth the climb. We knew we’d be looking out over a vast urban park, but for some reason we expected to see the vast expanses of lawn typical of American parks.

Instead, we were gazing upon a forest within the city from high above the treetops. The fall colors were as bright as we could ask them to be, and the setting sun shined through a spinning Mercedes logo atop a nearby office building.

Back in the lobby there’s a display with a lengthy narrative (in German) of the history of this monument and the nation it celebrates. From what we could gather, it commemorates liberation from Napoleon and the first German unification of the early 19th century.

We walked by the Reichstag on our way to Brandenburg Gate. We got a good look at the Reichstag. But like many major sites in Europe, Brandenburg Gate is in the process of being cleaned up and restored. That means it’s completely enclosed in scaffolding and the scaffolding was enclosed in canvas.

The canvas bore a picture of what the gate is supposed to look like (along with some advertising). That’s not what we came to see. Walking through the gate to old West Berlin, we were treated to a tunnel through scaffolding and a cacophony of jack-hammers and other loud construction tools.

Amid the machinery of construction is the artwork of celebration. The theme of small-scale public art in Berlin is bears: a blue bear stands on its head on top of a building, a rainbow-colored bear stands on its head by the street, and a bear in bib overalls holds the arch of a rainbow over its head bearing the message “bridges unite.” This is a city filled with hope, if only they could keep the politicians away.

After many years of repression, the pendulum in Berlin appears to have swung the other way. Having shed its chains, this city is still dancing and celebrating twelve years later.

The literature we saw for some of the local clubs showed that many of our single twenty-something hedonistic friends would have a great time here. For instance, one club advertised that on the last Saturday of the month, clothing is verboten (not optional, but verboten). All that is allowed are undies or ver-r-ry short skirts. Appropriate “clothing” is provided for those who have too much.

Berlin is also an international city once again, especially judging by the types of food available. We had some great Indian food at a place called Yogi Snack, and Lebanese from a place called Babylon.

And of course there’s all of the standard American crap that seems to be everywhere (why is it that the only American food that gets exported is the junk food?).

The best places are well-ventilated, but don’t expect to find non-smoking sections.

The forest of construction cranes on the skyline indicate that Berlin is a city with a lot of rebuilding to do as it once again becomes the seat of Germany’s government.