OMG!  NO ESCAPE ROOMS THIS DAY!

Hitler's Bunker

Though a rare occurrence, we did have days without escape rooms (sob.)  I had scheduled a 5 hour limo tour plus laundry day plus a concert so figured we had enough on our plate.  Plus, most escape rooms on Tuesdays didn't have bookings until the evening and we did have the concert.

Unfortunately, our driver was not a tour guide or entertainer, but more of a tell-me-where-you-want-to-go kind of guy.  When I told him I wanted to go to Hitler’s Bunker, he was totally perplexed – I wanted to say – “Hitler, remember him?  Killed a few million folk?” But I didn’t.  I figured the Germans had enough to worry about. 

Here are some pics and info about the bunker. 

Checkpoint Charlie, Tractors, and Laundry

In addition, this was bring-your-tractor-to-strike day in Berlin which meant we couldn’t get close to the Brandenburg Gate which is right next to the government buildings (Parliament, Chancellor’s Office, President’s Office).  Apparently, the German government has instituted some new regulations about using pesticides, following energy use guidelines and also importing some food crops from out of the country because it’s cheaper than buying locally.  5,000-10,000 Tractors were supposed to show up.  Our driver told us that the highways had been clogged with tractors and now they were doing the same in Berlin. 

We did get close to Checkpoint Charlie (drove past it) which is famous, mainly from spy movies about the Berlin Wall.  It's touristy like crazy.

In any case, we couldn’t get close to the government buildings and our driver was totally clueless where else he should take us, so we asked him to find us a laundromat and take us to our hotel to get our dirty laundry.  After all, it was washing day.

He found us a nice place that had a coffee shop and we bid Aufwidersehen after only 2.5 hours.  I had scheduled 5 (and paid for that) but it REALLY was getting boring with this driver and we were still tired: 

Concert

After we were done, we got an Uber back to the hotel and took a nap.  I had hoped that Rose was at the worst of her cold, because the coughing kept her up most of the night.  We went to a pharmacy again hoping to get something better – guess what?  They sell DayQuil/NyQuil here.  Go figure.  Unfortunately, she had not gotten to the worst of it yet.  That happened in Copenhagen.

After dinner, we headed to the concert here at the Admiralspalast.  I had picked the hotel location well, because it was a 3 minute walk to the venue.

Some pics of the venue and the show opener, Eera.

Fink

The main act, and a favorite singer of mine, Fink has a bunch of new material and played a lot of it.  It’s kind of tough to jam new stuff but it seemed pretty good.  Wanted to buy a CD but they only had LP.  When I said LP to Rose, she said “What’s that?”.  (This was in 2019 - EVERYBODY knows about vinyl now.)

Normally I don’t care for live performances because they don’t have the polished feel of a studio recording plus there are mistakes and such, but Fink is such a professional and has been in the business so long (he has 7 albums) that it was much better than the studio recordings.  They added extra stuff and as you can barely see here, he has TWO drum kits.

My typical goofiness asserts itself

On the way to the Admiralspalast, I took a picture of the TV Tower jutting out of a dome.  Looking at the picture now, I had no clue what the dome was, but using Google Maps 3D, was able to figure out what it was (the Bode Museum) and where I had stood to take the picture: