Gedächtniskirche

The next day we opted to take one of those ubiquitous Hop-On/Hop-Off bus tours that you see in every city that gets even the smallest number of tourists. We made the choice since we only had a very limited time in Berlin and thought it'd be a good way to at least see the outsides of a few places while getting between the main sites. One of the things John really wanted to show me was the
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Memorial Church). It's a church that was built at the end of the 19th century but was bombed in 1943. Instead of demolishing it or restoring it to its former glory it's been left as a memorial to victims of war. A new modern church has been built on a portion of the site but the real draw is the remnants of the original. It's interesting to see them together and nice to see something that hasn't been restored to look artificially old.