The Berlin Night Express leaves Sweden and makes its way to Berlin by way of a ferry. The train actually rolls onto the ferry, at which point you have the option of leaving the train or staying in your berth. The train picked us up at 9:30PM, and was on the ferry by 10:30, at which point we were quite warm and wanted some cold water to drink and a snack. No luck. I had no Euros on me, and the ferry (despite being Swedish) did not take Kronor. Also, while they happily take Visa, the guy at the cash was quite insistent they could not take a card that didn't use chip and PIN, even though every Visa terminal has this capability. Also, he was being a real jerk about it to everyone in the same situation as me. We decided sleep would be good and opted to head to the train to try to sleep. This was a bad decision, as when the train's not moving and just sitting in the hold of a ferry, you're not getting any nice cool breeze in the window. The train didn't have any A/C that we could find, either. So we spent about 3.5 hours on the train trying to sleep in an oppressive and muggy heat. We'd have been much better off staying up and relaxing upstairs -- notes for next time. By 2:30AM the train rolled off the boat in Germany and shortly thereafter we were underway with a nice breeze that quickly cooled off the cabin. So we each got about 3 hours' sleep before the announcement came that we were pulling into Berlin Hbf (main station). After a quick breakfast at one of the fast food cafes in the train station, and we made our way to the hotel, hopeful they'd let us check in early. They, of course, were happy to. If they had any rooms vacant. Which they didn't. We left our bags and were told to check back between 11 and 12. We walked around the city enjoying the nice sunny and cool day while half-asleep like zombies, and ultimately decided we could go to the zoo. The Berlin Zoo is enormous. And they've got just about every kind of animal you could think of. We wandered for a while, taking in various birds, cats, a panda, and some crazy nocturnal creatures. A few hours later, it was 11 and I was going to fall over if I didn't get into a bed soon, so we made our way back to the hotel to get some sleep. A nice 2 hour nap later, and we were ready to take on the rest of the day. For our second half of the day's adventure, we made our way towards the former East Berlin to check out the former Checkpoint Charlie and the museum there. The museum itself is dense and interesting -- I think we spent almost 3 hours there. If you don't believe the only thing missing from pictures of Ronald Reagan is a halo, you might get a bit annoyed in one of the rooms there. The have what amounts to a shrine to Reagan, which I find kind of laughable. But I won't go into politics here except to say that I think Ronald Reagan's connection to the end of Soviet communism had more to do with when he was president than what he did. The museum has a great deal of artifacts and stories from people who escaped from the east to the west, including the makings of the balloon that was the inspiration for the movie Night Crossing. I'd seen that movie as a kid when it was released, and it was my first exposure to the concept of not being allowed free travel. It really stuck with me, and it was very cool to be able to see and touch the actual balloon platform these two families built to get themselves out of the east. After the museum, we made our way to the Berliner Republik, a restaurant and bar with a "beer exchange". Modeled after the stock exchange, the beer prices are up on the monitors and updated every 5 minutes. The more popular a beer gets, the higher its price goes, and vice-versa. Occasionally, there's a market crash and for five minutes every beer is at its minimum price. Alas, this did not happen on our visit, but it was quite fun all the same, and it was nice to have some fresh German beers. Our next day in Berlin started with a bus tour of sorts, riding the 100 bus from the zoo stop all the way over to the Berlin Cathedral in the east, through the Tiergarten park, around the Brandenburg gate, and down Unter den Linden. Once at that part of town, we hopped off to catch a cruise on the river Spree - our run of doing a boat tour in every city we visited was still intact! Following the cruise, we walked back along Unter den Linden toward the Brandenburg gate. Along the way, we stopped at this Volkswagen shrine called Automobil Forum Berlin. We strolled in to look at some nice VWs, plus other cars from their sister companies (including a Bugatti Veyron), enjoy some coffee at their cafe, and play with some interactive art exhibits downstairs. One of the exhibits was a cool ferrofluid exhibit I'd only ever seen on Youtube. From the gate, we made our way to Potsdam Platz to have an early dinner before crashing at the hotel in the hopes of an early rise for our drive across Germany. Pics of Berlin.