Berlin

We had two full days in Berlin. Our first day we had planned to do a free waking tour with NewBerlin tours but missed it. we had looked at the map the night before and thought the meeting point was only around the corner but it turned out to be nearly 3km away.
Instead we headed to Brandenburg Gate, this is probably Berlins most iconic monument, it features on just about every souviner you can buy.
The Berlin Wall used to run right in front of this gate and you can still see where the wall used to sit. When the wall was torn down they replaced it with two rows of sunken in bricks so you can still see today exactly where the wall used to be.
After this we had a look at the Reichstag Parliament building. The building had a glass dome added to the top of it in 1999 so that the public can look down and watch parliament meetings.
This is supposed to be a gesture that these days politicians have nothing to hide. From the dome you have views all over Berlin. we had planned to climb up here but when we arrived the line was phenomenalaly (and it was only 9am!) long.
After this we headed to Bebelplatz square which is where the first book burning was held by the Nazis in 1933 where over 20,000 books were burned.
Today they have a memorial built in under the ground. It is a room under the square and standing in the square you can look down through a glass window in the ground into a room lined with empty bookshelves. Also their is a plaque on the ground that says "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" which in English translates to: "Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people"
Then it was time for some breakfast of juice, coffee and croissiants. this has become our staple breakfast in europe because it so dam cheap!
After breakfast we walked across the street to see the Holocaust Memorial. The memorial consists of nearly 5 acres of rows and rows of concrete slabs.
They are placed in a way to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.
An interesting fact about this is that they have coated all of the concrete slabs (2711 of them) with anti-graffitti paint. this paint was supplied by the same company who used to supply the Nazis with gas for their gas chambers.
Underneath this memorial is a free information centre, we spent at least two hours down here reading personal stories from people who were in concentration camps, reading quotes from letters and postcards and diaries. we listened to recordings of people telling stories from their time in the camps and what happened after they were released. they also had one room full of displays about different families explaining who was captured when and why they were captured and who survived the camps.
Next stop was Checkpoint Charlie... this was the best known Berlin Wall crossing point between East and West Germany during the Cold War.
There is a large photo of a soviet soldier facing in one direction and an american soldier facing in the other direction. the guards you can see are actors employed to have their photos taken with tourists. Sadly right next to the checkpoint now stands a large McDonalds.
We had lunch at a beach bar (these are all over Berlin for some reason)

This is what the checkpoint used to look like, now the street
is full of fast food stores and clothing stores.

After this we walked across to the Topography of Terror. This is a free gallery that is housed where the former SS and Gestapo headquaters used to stand. Running parallel to the gallery building is a section of the wall that still remains as it did during the war.
Inside the gallery they had many displays, the first one concentrated on SS and police in the "Third Reich" as well as the crimes they perpetrated throughout Europe. Another display focused mainly on the Jewish Ghetto in Berlin. Another one focused on war criminals, they had 3D displays of what Berlin looked like back then and also what the SS headquaters looked like. The room that really affected me was the room about the Jewish Ghetto. They had one display that told you about a man who had been chosed to be the spokesperson for the Jews in the ghetto. he was told that 25,000 people must be killed and he had to choose who these people would be. he chose all children under 10, the sick and the elderly. It was horrific to read this. The room also had a lot of photos of children playing, some in make shift kindergartens, some of toddlers in creches. They also had photos of many sick people, people walking in no shoes and very little clothing.
This radio tower (or Berliner Funkturm) is another famous icon in Berlin featuring on many souviners. You can climb to the top and i think they have a revolving resturant up there.

Here is a fountain at the base of the radio tower

Our last stop of the day was at the DDR museum. The exchibitions showed the daily life in East Germany in a hands on way. They had a lounge room set up you could sit in and flick channels on the tv, listen to the phone, etc. They had a bathroom you could explore and a kitchen where you could flick through old cook books and have a look at the food packaging they had. You have the opportunity to drive a Trabi car (it doesnt move but the engine starts and you get to simulate a drive on the tv).

Ewen driving the Trabi car
Me cooking up a storm at the museum

These bears are dotted all over Berlin, all painted in a different way. It kind of reminds us of Shepparton with all their cows :-)

Our second day in Berlin we hit up the East Side Gallery which is the longest remaining section of the Berlin Wall.


We took over 100 photos of all of the different art works displayed on the wall, here are some of my favourites. the very first photo up the top is my favourite one!

After walking up and down the length of the wall we stopped in at a beach bar for a drink

After this we went to the Jewish Museum where we only planned to spend an hour or two but ended up staying about 4 hours i think. it was huge and pretty interesting. it was not neccesarily only about Jewish life during the war but about life in general for Jewish people throughout the years.

This statue was out the front of the museum....

I have down graded my backpack

Me as a little Jewish child

This is where we had dinner, you got to sit in swinging cane chairs! It was pretty cool until the food came and you had to time your swimgs with getting the food into your mouth!!!