Settling into Berlin

John and our son had trouble sleeping last night, but we still had a better day today. We went to the Brandenburg Gate and saw an interesting variety of memorials—to the slain Jews of Europe, to those who died trying to cross the Berlin wall, and to Soviet soldiers in World War II. The picture below shows John and our son at the Holocaust memorial.
Then John and our son headed back to the apartment and our daughter and I took a long walk in the Tiergarten, the downtown park.

John fell during their walk back to the apartment. He said he just caught his toe on a smooth pavement. He was very slightly scratched but otherwise fine, but it clearly scared him, with good reason. I don’t know if a walking stick would help him balance—he bought two hiking sticks some years ago and has said he found them very helpful for hiking, though I haven’t seen him use them much. The difficulty at present is that any problem happens so rarely.

John went to the supermarket and a wine store after going back to the apartment and then in the evening we all perked up enough to take the subway to a Turkish open air market. We got dinner in that area at a Greek restaurant, but even that was expensive. We are very glad we rented an apartment rather than staying at a hotel.