TO BERLIN

Planning at trip to Berlin, mainly to see the paintings there. I am interested in the Germans, Otto Dix, Kirchner, Georg Grosz etc.
There are a vast number of galleries and museums of course, and the main ones all seem to be under state control, so you can buy a three-day ticket to visit. No free ones like our wonderful National Gallery and Tate. We plan to visit the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for the Contemporary, as it is listed in my Guide Book, and also the Neue National Gallery and the Gemaldegalerie (13th cent to 18th cent).
I hope that Berlin is not too vast, because walking round exhibitions is tiring enough without having the walk for miles between them. I want to spend as little time as possible in the Underground, as I do enough of that in London.
I am trying to work out a brief itineray, because in only four full days, it will be a big rush. Of course we will be visiting the beer cellars too, and trying some German cream torte! Not to mention the sausages and sauerkraut.
On the plan is a bike tour of the city, and although it is not likely in the time, also a bike tour of the Third Reich if possible. History in such an ancient and famous city cannot be ignored by us.
To put an emotional spin on the visit, I have just watched the film about Ann Frank which was on the TV recently. And talked to a fellow allotment holder who said he was in Berlin during the airlift, as he was in the RAF, and he said "We thought we had had it bad but when you saw what was the result of the bombing in Germany, well...."
I shared a room in the YWMCA in Great Russell Street, many years ago when I first left school, with Angelika. She came from Berlin and told me about how hungry they had been, and how glad they were when the food parcels came on the airlift. Angelika, where are you now? You went to Buenos Aires and then returned to Germany, I think. I still have a photo of you and your boyfriend taken in my bed-sit in Tooting.