Berliner Dome

After Hard Rock. . . the last thing we wanted to see in Berlin was the Dome (the church). We got back in the van & tried once again to maneuver around the marathon going on. On our way, we saw this neat church that had obviously been bombed at some point. Usually when a church gets bombed, they reconstruct it to it's original state, but this poor thing they just left as it was. The side of the church was destroyed so you could see directly into the chapel from the street. We kind of felt sorry for it. But it was interesting to look at with it's crippled tower & open chapel.

Shortly after the sad little church, we found the dome. We parked in a parking spot that we were pretty sure was illegal parking, but there were TONS of other cars there, so we parked. It was across the way from the Dome, but we couldn't get to the dome because of. . . you guessed it . . . the marathon. The church was completely closed & the marathon ran completely around it! But we got to see it from across the park at least. It was massive. It's one of the biggest domed churches we've seen out here (second to St. Peter's at the Vatican of course). It was beautiful. I wish we could have had the opportunity to go inside, but it was fun seeing it from where we did. Oh, & just as we were pulling out of the parking spot, we saw the politzi pull up & start issuing tickets to the other parked cars. Talk about perfect timing.