My new favorite Starbucks is in Berlin, Germany.
Twice in a week of January I sipped morning coffee and picked at a chocolate chip muffin in front of a big picture window facing the Brandenburg Gate.
In the mornings, before 9, the Gate was mine.
The morning sun lighted the Quadriga atop the city’s famed image where the Berlin Wall once stood, where cheering Germans celebrated its demise in 1989.
For half an hour or more, I sat alone at my window, though eventually folks on the way to the U.S. Embassy on the left, and the French Embassy on the right, stopped for coffee on their way to work. Coffee and a muffin are about $5.50. This Starbucks is easy to find, across the street from the luxurious Hotel Adlon and the S Bahn stop at Unter den Linden.
Later in the day, the square usually is packed with travelers and tour groups.
But in the mornings before 9, especially in the slow winter season, you may have it all to yourself -- the icon that drew Napoleon to steal a piece for France, that stirred the Nazis and became a symbol of worldwide hatred, that sat atop a wall through most of the cold war, and gleams today in a peaceful morning sun.
For planning a trip to Berlin (in English, click on British flag, left at top), CLICK
Information on Planning a trip to Germany The Germany Page for vacation destinations Back in Berlin again, 20 years after the fall of the wall. Poking about pieces of the old Berlin Wall Guns, dogs, and fear along the old Iron Curtain When East met West on peaceful soil in 1989
