Weather is gray and rainy all day (detect a pattern?). Left at 8 am for more excursion with a local guide. Drove to large section of Berlin wall left as a reminder. Then to Checkpoint Charlie and its fascinating museum that documents the many ingenious ways in which people escaped from the East. We drove past the site of Hitler's bunker, which is not only unmarked but away from the street and in the process of having a kindergarten build on it. Hitler sites are intentionally not marked or memorialized, to deprive neo-nazis of shrines. Display of the swastika is illegal and we did not see any except in museum photographs. Rode out to Potsdam. First to the Cecilienhof Schloss, where the Potsdam treaty was signed in 1945. Toured its beautiful gardens and some rooms. Quick lunch from stands in a parking lot. Here we found Berliner Weisse, the regional beer consisting of wheat beer with raspberry (röt, red) or woodruff (grün, green) syrup added. Then toured the grounds of San Souci, a palace with only 5 rooms but featuring a hillside garden resembling a smaller version of Versailles gardens in Paris. After returning to Berlin, we walked to the Pergamon museum along with Otto and also Susan Weiner (70 year old chemistry professor at a community college in Silicon Valley). Main room features a reconstructed Greek temple. Andy had studied this and was fascinated. Walked back to hotel in light rain. Then Pete, Nancy and Bob took a wild taxi ride to the Nikolaviertel district, with new and renovated shops where the oldest buildings in Berlin had stood. Taxi ride was wild because the driver knew better than we just how close this was, just over 4 Euro fare, and was none too pleased with this after sitting in line at the Hilton. We had beers at the GeorgesBrau then walked back to the hotel. While most of the tour group went on an optional dinner, we took Susan to a nearby Löwenbrau (lion's brew) beer hall for traditional German food and beer. She entranced us all with her life story. Born in 1934, she escaped from Soviet-controlled Hungary in 1956 by walking through snow-covered Alps in the night across the border into Austria. She endured threats of being shot as well as a long period in a detention camp. Eventually making her way to New York and later to California.