Took an Uber to the rented apartment. Finally figured out where the apartment door was located and went inside only to find it smelled like an ashtray and the second bedroom was downstairs in the basement with some very rickety stairs from the kitchen down to it.  It smelled even worse when we got down there.  We immediately called it The Dungeon!  There were two small basement windows that had bars on them.  And the two bathrooms it was supposed to have was really 1.5 bathrooms. Nothing in the basement bedroom.  We all decided to find someplace else, we couldn’t stay here.  We will never use Booking.com again. They would not help us get our money back ($1440). Seems the owners know if they don’t respond to Booking.com emails about the issue they won’t refund the money. Seems to me to be well oiled SCAM. Some pictures of the Lux Central Apartment showing the dungeon bedroom and sketchy stairs leading down to it. Notice the miniature windows as the egress… with bars. Not that anyone but an infant could have gotten out thru them if the bars weren’t there.
Cabbed over to a New Hotel in East Berlin. It was extremely Nice! And at a very reasonable price. Almost dirt cheap! What was really interesting was they included 4 beers, Soda or water each day.  Dinner at Italian place on other side of Spree river. Weird burger meat, I wouldn’t go back there. In house breakfast that first morning for €48.. Good, but the place around the corner was €32 and just a little bit better.
Next morning we did the Breakfast place around the corner, and for the next few mornings too. Museum Island, big church then walk to Korean BBQ and the downpour!  Bus back toward hotel and hit a grocery store to pick up some supplies and upon going outside the heavens let loose again and we waited till it slowed a bit then made a dash but only got about 100 feet and ducked into a car-park till the next slowing.  Then off to the hotel with a slightly soggy bag of food in my hand.
Scott and I took a ride to a Firehouse near that other apartment and talked to one of the fireman in the house and explained what we had encountered. Showed him the picture and explained the kitchen was at the top of the stairs 
that seemed cobbled together and had no handrails going down. Just a couple foot section at the very top.  Those stairs also had large openings without any sort of mechanism to keep children from falling thru them down to the floor below.  The openings were big enough for almost anyone to fall thru, so the missing hand rails seemed critical in my opinion.  The windows in that basement were barred so there was no other escape route out if a fire started in the kitchen.  The fireman told Scott and I that if a fire broke out in that kitchen and someone was down there it would be their last day on earth.
Metro’d over to Checkpoint Charlie, then bused over to 
Brandenburg gate. Along the way the Bus stops, Terminates, driver won’t tell me where to get back on and continue the journey to the BB gate. Walk over to train station to catch exact same bus and driver again to get back home.  Took the metro to the Alexander Platz where we walked around in the crowd and then hopped on a bus to the hotel.
Found a great Taco place a couple miles from us called El Taco Loco. Really good Mexican food.  So good we went back a few nights later with Tami and Scott.
Pad Thai dinner €10.50 that night was pretty good, especially considering it was a reasonable cost and just a few steps from the hotel.
I decided to take a short trip to find the Schwerbelastungskorper.  aka The heavy load bearing body.  You can google that to find out what it was used for.
We bused down to a bridge over the Spree river to walk over to what was left of the Berlin wall.  Its quite interesting with all the murals that are now painted on it. Its probably a mile long stretch and not all of it is painted on both sides. Enjoy the pictures..
After our stay we headed back to the Berlin Hofbahnhof for a ride to Rostock Germany for the ferry to Denmark. It was going to be a pretty long day.
Enjoy the pics..
