I will admit, I didn't really know what I would see when I went to Checkpoint Charlie. I just knew it was a good opportunity to feel a little bit of history. And that I did.

There is so much information on the walls along the sidewalk. I even managed to forget about the cold for a while as I was reading. It gives a history, complete with photographs, through the war and leading up to the Berlin Wall's construction and eventual collapse.

The concept of the Wall, like much of the second world war, boggles my mind. How could it seem right to fence people in, even just a mere 18 years ago?

One moment that gave me pause was a picture of the world's leaders. Three men sat there, smiling, each representing a country. It can be boiled down to that. Huge countries, warring countries, angry countries are represented, in the end, by men. Human beings. And those human beings are the ones that direct the war and the anger that we end up attributing to a nation and, in doing so, make it so less personal and relatable. Seeing those men in that picture...well, they are just not so different from me. The weight on their shoulders—I cannot imagine.

It was a chilling experience to cross that line from east to west. It is so simple, but just a few years ago it was not.

If you are in Berlin, you owe it to yourself to visit Checkpoint Charlie as well as what remains of the Berlin Wall. Learn as much as you can about all of it. We must not let it happen again.

Just a 10-minute walk or so from The Westin is Checkpoint Charlie. On my way to visit this famous site, I looked down at the sidewalk and saw stones that mark the former location of the Berlin Wall. These stones are throughout the city, crossing sidewalks, roads, etc. Near Checkpoint Charlie, you can see how the wall shifts direction, creating a zigzag pattern, presumably around former buildings.

At Checkpoint Charlie itself, there is the border crossing stand. Soldiers are there now for a paid photo opportunity for tourists. Another site for tourists is a stand where you can get your passport or anything else stamped with the location and date.

There are also signs that indicate that you are either entering or leaving the American sector. This area is so rich with a tumultuous history. It's moving to think about the people who lived in Berlin and Germany during the years the wall divided their country.

History is evident when you visit here. There is a area that is dedicated to the known people killed while trying to cross the Berlin Wall.

Haus Am Checkpoint Charlie is an interesting mix of artwork, multimedia, photography, and newspaper articles with imagination, ingenuity, and innovation, devising ways to go over, under, or through the Berlin Wall in a desperate attempt to reach the West, along with attempts to build a better mousetrap, as each succeeding generation made escape harder. They changed from barbed wire to the infamous Berlin Wall, built a zig-zag road crossing, moved the border crossing farther back, stationed automatic machine guns along the border, and redesigned the guard tower's windows to be smaller after a defection from one of the guards through a window.

People dug tunnels and smuggled themselves in cable reels, suitcases, speaker boxes, and automobiles. Some of the effort in its presentation could use improvement with a larger type and clearer displays, with a consistent, easy-to-read typestyle and a country flag symbol to denote language.

A museum souvenir shop is available. Complimentary lockers are available to secure your jackets/bags with a €2 coin downstairs. Entrance fee is €9.50. A guard's station is recreated outside the museum, with an oversized portrait photo of a guard overhead.

Daily 9am-10pm

Tel: 253 72 50

Email: info@mauer-museum.com

U6 to Kochstr

On my last trip, this was one of the few places where a chunk of the wall still stood. On my first trip, the checkpoint still existed itself, but I believe was gone by second visit a year later.

As for the museum itself, it's an eerie mix of history, art, and philosophy. There are the necessary explorations as to what the Wall was and what it signified. There are propaganda posters left from the days of the Wall, as well as pictures of the graffiti and art that had been put on the Wall over the years.

One room specializes in the attempts -- both successful and failed -- to get over the Wall. In this section, there are fake car trunks, makeshift hang-gliders, and altered luggage that could bring to mind the likes of James Bond.