It was the third time within six months that I went to Berlin, and the 7th time of my life. I enjoyed it as much as ever. People say that the third piece of a cake does not taste as well as the first one, and if I should apply that on Berlin it is totally wrong. I have had my 7th cake and it tastes even better than the first time. We travelled to Berlin on Boxing Day, and we set out from Umeå 4.55 in the morning, and we managed to get to Arlanda 25 minutes before the gate closed, so we were extremely pleased to have caught the plane at all. In Berlin that night I bought Cascada's latest album, but it was not as good as the first one. The first seven pictures is from that particular night. The day after we shopped a little and had a look at the old familiar sights in Berlin.

While Lizette was shopping in a mall near Frankfurter Allee, I went to Treptower Park to see the Soviet Hero once again, and believe it or not, he was still there. We also saw the dome of Berlin, and had a splendid view of Berlin, and especially the TV-Tower and the Red City Council. I enjoyed seeing Knut for the first time, but he was taking a nap, and hardly took any notice of the audience. When he turned around, many people in the crowd said: "aah!". We saw a magpie close to Knut, and we were all hoping that he would pick on Knut, so that he would wake up. Unfortunately the magpie did not have the guts to mess with a young polar bear, that wanted to have his morning nap in peace.

There are some pictures of things I liked when I was there, for example slogans and posters. We liked in particular the slogan of Galeria Kaufhof: World Class Shopping. We bought same plates from Heinrich Winterling there. The things on offer in Galeria Kaufhof are truly world class, and we have problems finding similar things in Sweden, but then again there are 3,4 million inhabitants in Berlin and 12 million tourists every year. No wonder you can buy almost anything you want or did not know that you wanted, then.

One of the reasons for going to Berlin was to take part in the New Year Celebrations. We knew that there would be a huge party in 17. June Street and at Brandenburg Gate, but we went there too late. We thought it would be enough to go there 90 minutes before midnight, but they had sealed off the entire area, and it was pretty rough close to the fences. There was one young guy that lay in his own vomitings. Instead we headed for Potsdamer Platz and saw the New Year in there. Not bad to be there, but we regretted not having gone to the Brandenburg Gate earlier.

On New Year's Day it started to snow, and it was just like a winter day in Sweden. We took many pictures from Tiergarten, where people built snowmen. The last five pictures are from my mobile camera, and therefore of poorer quality, but they are fun anyway. The TV-set was an expensive one: 73 399 EUR, but it was over 100 inches. If you use Explorer you can rest your mouse pointer over the pictures, and then get additional information about the objects.