Emil

The main reason for going to Berlin, well, not a reason but what kicked off the idea was that I'd been reading Emil and the Detectives to Ewan. A lovely little story about a boy who travels by train to Berlin to visit his grandmother and gets caught up in an adventure with a group of Berlin boys chasing a thief. Today, after visiting Checkpoint Charlie and the associated museum (think Secret Bunker) we took the U-bahn to pick up Emil's route from Zoologischer to the corner of Kaiser Strasse and Trautenaustrasse. Trouble is, Kaiser Strasse doesn't exist so we used Bundesalle instead, assuming that in 1920 trolley cars would have only run on major roads and of the roads available, Bundesalle looked most likely. Lots of the action happens around Trautenaustrasse and Nikolsburger Platz.

Then it moves on to Nollendorf Platz although there's no trace of the buildings that were in the book (assuming the illustrations in the book were the actual buildings). But we still had a nice wander around the area speculating which might have been the Hotel Kreid and the bank branch in which the thief was eventually cornered by Emil and his new pals.