You can see how stunned he is! This gorgeous candy display is rebuilt every Tuesday with all different candy and decorative theme…and is just one small niche in a German department store that dedicates 2 huge floors to food products. Approximately 5,000 square feet was dedicated to chocolate products alone…just in case you have a hankering for chocolate made with camel milk. There were gorgeous displays of breads, oils and vinegars, teas, spices, poultry and meats (wild and farmed), nuts, pastries, soups and stews, sausages, aspics, crustaceans and fish, and small restaurants with tasting menus specializing in each area. It was as big as an IKEA for gourmet international foods and contained food delicacies we’ve never seen before. I could live here!

I always thought of Germans as terse and professional, eg. lacking a sense of humor…but I was so wrong! Enjoy this brilliantly located ad using the bus’s exhaust system to advertise a drug to treat erectile dysfunction (above). Ha!

We asked our new friend Tomas (who generously squired us around Berlin’s newest bars and best donor kebab restaurants) if German men had a predilection to pee “free style”, like “Look Ma, no hands!”  He had no idea WTF we were talking about until we led him to the toilet in our apartment…then he laughed heartily at the LARGE graphic above.

Of course Germans still feel shame for allowing the Nazis to systematically murder their countrymen so there are historical reminders throughout the city. This marker (indicating a site for a former railroad station that shipped Jews, gypsies and homosexuals to the concentration camps listed) is right outside the high end department store shown at the top.

The public transportation system is easy, everyone speaks English, there is inexpensive and delicious Turkish food in every tiny space around town, and there is public art and murals everywhere. We loved Berlin for exploration on foot. The only problem was intense heat (95 degrees daily) and high humidity except at night and first thing in the morning. Still, five days was not enough for us, and we will return soon.