We were up at 06:45. The room felt so dry after a warm night, but with the window open it was far too noisy. At least one of Carmen’s friends were staying in the same hotel as us, and we met up with her in the lobby so I could navigate our way to parkrun.

From Wittenbergplatz we headed to Hermannplatz, and then had a short walk from there, passing a Shri Ganesh Hindu temple. We actually saw our first red squirrels of the trip on our way through the park to the Café Hasenschänke where the run briefing and start would be. It was a little cool though, so I was eager to start running.

From each direction was a steady flow of people arriving to do parkrun, and then eventually the volunteers arrived to set-up and brief us all too. There were a few familiar faces for us both amongst the runners, who we spoke to before the run. There were 843 participants lining up at the start instead of the usual ~200. This wasn’t just a record for Hasenheide, but a record for all of Germany too!

I took it easy and we ran together for this one, to make sure our legs wouldn’t do too much before tomorrow. It’s a mostly flat parkrun in a large loop, with some small differences between the first and second lap. On the second lap you fork to the right and run up a hill that winds round and goes back down.

It was such a busy event that we had to queue at the finishing funnel to finish the run. The queue to take a photograph with the parkrun sign was shorter after the run than before, so we took the opportunity to do so before scanning our tokens.

Whilst on the run I’d had a message to say my sister had been taken to A&E by her friend. As the day went on it became clear she was going to be admitted, and would have surgery for her gall bladder much earlier than anticipated.

One of Carmen’s friends who lives in Berlin then met us, and walked with us to Isla cafe. I had a lemon tea, and a slice of chocolate sponge cake, that had a peanut butter icing on the top. This gave Carmen a reasonable amount of time to catch-up with her friend, and then we headed back to the hotel.

After a quick change, we headed back out to Wittenbergplatz, and took the U12 all the way to Warschauer Straße and walked over the East Side Gallery so Carmen could tick off her first piece of tourism: seeing some of the Berlin Wall. It was starting to get colder though unfortunately. We decided to get some hot food for a late lunch to keep warm. I had a bratwurst from one kiosk, whilst Carmen had lamb momos from the Nepalese kiosk next-door.

One more train later, we were in Alexanderplatz to see the Fernsehturm, and looked around a souvenir shop whilst there. I bought a stuffed bear for Lindsay, thinking it might cheer her up. We on the other hand needed something to warm us up, and thought we’d find somewhere to sit down for hot drink. The area here was a lot busier than when I’d visited a few years ago, so getting around took a little longer than it had back then. We went to Cinnamood, a dessert franchise, to get a pack of four flavoured cinnamon buns for €18.90 to have later, and then into Starbucks for a hot drink.

My thought now was for Carmen to see the Berliner Dom, and the Brandenburg Gate, so we headed over to Friedrichsbrücke and crossed to Museum Island. There was some wedding photography taking place in front of the Old National Gallery, and across the pleasure garden in front of the Berliner Dom. Carmen spotted a reconstruction of the Sanchi Gate in front of the Humboldt Forum, so we headed over the road to see that before starting to make our way down Unter den Linden.

We didn’t get very far before we made a small diversion down a side street, where Carmen had spotted an interesting building: Friedrichswerdersche Church. I poked my head through the door to look inside, and could see it’d been turned into some sort of gallery with statues. We then looped back round onto the main road and continued our walk, with me pointing out the infamous Bebelplatz: the site of the Nazi book burning.

We then walked the remainder of the way to the Brandenburg Gate. Pariser Place was as busy as you’d expect, people crowded around to take pictures in front of the gate. We found a spot to one side to photograph our LEGO minifigures in front of it.

When we crossed to the other side of the gate, we could see the preparations for the half marathon. We then saw the 2,710 concrete columns that make up the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, on our way to Potsdamer Platz, and the Mall of Berlin. We weren’t going there to do more shopping, we were visiting the other LEGO store to get more stamps in our LEGO passports.

We thought we’d take the tube back from there to save our legs, but when we tried to change train at Gleisdreieck (due to construction work meaning we’d need to be on the U12 line instead) we found something had happened that had stopped trains between Gleisdreieck and Nollendorfplatz. It wasn’t clear what had happened, but when we left the station we saw several fire engines, and a few police cars parked outside with their lights flashing.

Carmen used Citymapper to find us the nearest bus stop to get us the rest of the way back to the hotel - the M29 bus stop was just over the bridge. It was extremely busy on that bus, but it was keeping us warm. When we got back to the hotel we changed into some warmer clothes and then headed over the road to MOLA for our dinner reservation. It seemed like at first they couldn’t find it, but then managed to, and warned us that they may need to seat other people with us. That was okay though, we just needed some carbs ahead of the race, same as every other runner in the area the minute. We could tell there were other runners here.

I had spaghetti bolognese and apple juice; our meals together with a tip came to €40. It was quite a large serving of pasta, so was good value. Everything we needed to do was now done, and we could now get our running kit ready, and relax for what little remained of the day.