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Originally posted by Ken226:
We got 2 round trip tickets from Seattle and a rental car for 1000$. Flying the polar route, up and over.
Been there, done that, with reversed directions obviously. The nice thing is that Berlin-Seattle doesn't take much longer than flying into Newark or Dulles, and I found the ten-hour time shift is actually easier to deal with than the six hours on the East Coast; you just exchange the night's sleep with an afternoon nap on the first day, then you're pretty good.
I second Rick Lee's suggestions, including the KZ Dora-Nordhausen memorial site which is near my home region; an advantage is that you go southwest from Berlin on Autobahns 9 and 38, which in my experience is preferable to A 2 further north (most of the current roadwork sites should be gone by February). Alternately, staying on A 9 after Halle/Leipzig Airport will take you to Nuremberg and Munich.
Berlin Tourist Central is centered on the Brandenburg Gate, with the Reichstag, Museum Island, Checkpoint Charlie with the Wall Museum and Holocaust Memorial all in walking distance. The "Topography of Terror" at the former Gestapo headquarters is also close to the last two, though only some basement cells remain of the complex and the exhibition is text-heavy. I no longer work at the Reichstag, but you can make a reservation to go to the dome at a shop across the road, then come back two hours later or so and go through security. It has the second-best look over Berlin, and is free (the best look is from the observation deck of the TV tower on Alexanderplatz, but they charge you an arm and a leg).
There are hop-on, hop-off narrated bus round tours of the city for which you can't escape canvassing; also boat tours on the River Spree, though February is not the best time for that. Potsdamer Platz with the distinctive Sony Center is a cinematic and gastronomic hotspot with several theaters, the movie museum and lots of restaurants, including one of two competing "House of the Thousand Beers". There are two places to see remnants of the Berlin Wall, the memorial site on Bernauer Straße which recreates a section of the full barriers, and the East Side Gallery with spraypaint artwork not far from my place.
If you are willing to get a little more out of the way for history, do a tour of the former Humboldthain flak tower, visit the biggest Soviet war memorial and cemetry outside the fUSSR in Treptower Park, former Tempelhof Airport with the Berlin Airlift Memorial (the airfield is now a recreational area, with some part used for a refugee container camp, and the distinctive hangar and terminal still used for historic movie shots once in a while), and the Allied Museum out southwest on Clayallee, opposite the former US headquarters; it's a small but nice site depicting the history of allied forces in Berlin, including the original Checkpoint Charlie control hut (the one on location today is a copy).
Overall, I would plan at least four days for Berlin alone. Outside that, if you were to spend just one day in German museums, I would recommend the twin technical museums of Sinsheim and Speyer, near Heidelberg. They have basically everything, including a Concorde and Soviet Tu-144 SST as well as a Buran space shuttle, historic cars and fire engines, locomotives, armored vehicles, some boats and submarines. Koblenz is also nice, though the Rhine-Mosel confluence with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial and Ehrenbreitstein Fortress across the river, or a Rhine Valley cruise, will not be so spectacular in February. The town also has the Bundeswehr's technical studies collection though, with lots of exotic weapons all the way from small arms to artillery, armored vehicles and aircraft.
Being in that area also sets you on an easy course for France. Since you mentioned the Maginot Line, I would recommend Fort Hackenberg north of Metz; they have regular multi-lingual tours, including in English. I would strongly urge to go on to Verdun with the French national cemetery, WW I monument and ossuary, Fort Douaumont, "Trench of Bayonets" and war museum; together, both sites will cover a day, and you will have a proper historic base of knowledge for the First World War before going on to Normandy and the events of the Second, which ultimately resulted from it.
