•  Click first link to learn more about that green statue on top of the columned building :-)

View of the Brandenburg Gate Quadriga from the panorama platform of a nearby skyscraper. We rose to the viewing deck in Europe's fastest elevator: 24 floors in 20 seconds.  On the smooth and speedy ascent, we thought we might have left our stomachs back at the ground floor, but neither in the going up or the coming down did we experience anything like the whiplash we expected.


From this lofty position, we saw not just the city's astonishing array of old and ultra-modern buildings  sprinkled among extensive parklands but also patches of rainfall. Hence the haze in this photo. Visible downpours dowsing different areas of this huge metropolis gave us the sense that each Bezirk (borough) is its own climate zone.