Reichtag Tour / Final Night in Berlin

After a day where students shopped and saw the sights of Berlin we had a great group dinner and then visited the Reichtag - Germany's Federal Capital Building.  It has an amazing history and the tour was wonderful.  I will let the photos do the talking....

The Group outside the Reichtag.  The glass dome on the top / middle is where out tour ended.  It is an amazing piece of architecture and the building itself has so much history

The chamber where the Bundestag meets - this is equivalent to our House of Representatives.  Our guide shared the similarities and differences in the way the German government works

On May 3, 1945 Russian soldiers captured the Reichtag and many wrote graffiti on the walls.  this has been preserved, and 69 years later we got to see it on May 3, 2014.  The "3-5-45" in the photo is the European way to write the date: day-month-year.

The women of GBC 2014 standing in from of the most powerful woman in the world's office: German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  Cool on many levels including that we literally were standing outside her office on the tour.  Perhaps one of these woman will be the US's first president.

The group on the roof with the dome in the background.  The dome was part of the 1995-1998 renovation of the building to allow it to once again become the capital building for Germany after the reunification of Germany about a decade earlier.  It serves both a practical and symbolic function and it is very cool to walk to the top off and see the city around you and the legislative chamber below you.

Some of us continued seeing the Berlin sites after the tour and I took this nighttime shot of the Brandenburger Tor.  It is such a great structure.