View Larger Map
That night we caught a bullet train to Berlin which took us about 4 hours. At one point we reached about 249 km/h (but the fastest we saw was 260km/h on another journey).
The next day we decided to take a walking tour of Berlin by a walking tour company that was recommended by the Lonely Planet and was also used by the History Channel to shoot their Documentary of Berlin and the War.
We were going around with a couple of Aussies (we only met 1 Kiwi the whole time in Germany but plenty of Aussies and Americans!) and Alisa enjoyed gossiping and also talking about the tragic death of Heath Ledger with one of the Aussie girls.
The first stop that we went to was a church that had its tower blown up by air-raids during WWII.
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, nicknamed the "lipstick".
We then made our way to East Berlin (we were staying in West Berlin) and met up with some more tour trekkers and then the tour actually started.
Me with 3 Aussies on our walking tour.
Berlin was a small fishing village built on swamp land (Berlin probably means ‘swamp’ in Old Polabian (Old Slavik)) and it looked set to be a city that was to be forgotten but the Prussian Empire wanted Berlin as the Capital so as such it was built up. Berlin has always been a city of power and a sign of strength in many empires.
We then went onto Museum Island (aptly named because there are several museums on an island) and saw the Altes Museum (Old Museum) and stood on the palace garden (Lustgarten).
Museum Island
The only remaining Synagogue from the War Days. It was saved at the last moment by a man running down the road with a document saying that it was German Monument as a German King was crowned there. There was a church next to the museum which, had soot on the outside from fires that raged during WWII. They decided to leave it like that as a reminder of the past. Freidrich I who built the museum said, “Culture (the museum) has a place next to religion and the Army”.
The Berliner Dom.
Shailen outside the Altes Museum. The bowl outside was actually supposed to be inside the building but they built the columns too close together and couldn't get it through!
There was also an old Soviet Parliament building which was being torn down that once stood next to the palace (only a small part remains – a common theme in many parts of Germany) which had the balcony where governmental control was declared from shortly after WWI (The Great War). Some governments only lasted 8 hours in one day then another took over!
Only the middle strip containing the balconies are part of the original palace.
Adjacent to the Palace was the Old Soviet Parliament Building. It is now in the process of being knocked down but not because they found asbestos lining the building... But this building was filled with water once (on purpose) and little boats were going around it inside!
TV Tower
The top photo shows a building that houses this memorial. It is another war memorial and says that its not only the soldiers that suffer, but their mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, etc.
There were different walking men for the traffic lights in East and West Berlin. This little fella has became quite famous and you can buy pretty much anything with his picture on!
We then made our way over to Bebelplatz – the site of the infamous Nazi Book Burning incident on May 10 1933.
At this square there was also the Alte Oper Haus and the Hamboldt University who produced 29 Nobel Prize winners including Albert Einstein.
Bebelplatz with Humboldt University at the end. 
A library on the border of Bebelplatz.
Karl Marx also studied here then fled from Berlin and its thought that many of his ideas came from his time in Berlin. There is also a church that is shaped like an upside down teacup in the square. This is thought to be because Friedrich II who was a Prussian Leader was asked what he wants the church to look like he turned a teacup upside down and said “like this!”
The upside down teacup.
In the square there was also a memorial for all the books that were burned. All it is, is this Perspex glass on the ground that shows a room with empty book shelves that houses 20,000 books, which is the amount of books thought to be burnt by the Nazis. That is a huge chunk of missing education from writers that were seen “un-German”!
The memorial in the ground with all the empty shelves.
There is a plaque in the ground by this memorial that says, “Where they burn books, they will also burn humans in the end.” This is a quote that was said by one of the authors that had his books burnt only he said this 40 years before this book burning took place!!!
We then made our way to see the concert hall that sits between a French Cathedral and the German Cathedral. There were many French migrants in Berlin in the early 18th Century and so they were granted permission to build a church here in 1701 but shortly later (1708), just to show them who’s boss, the Germans put theirs up.
The two Cathedrals facing each other and looking very similar!
Concert Hall with the German Cathedral to the side.
The French Cathedral.
The German Cathedral was completely destroyed during WWII by fire and was rebuilt after the reunification of Germany in 1989. As mentioned, the French migrants that came to Berlin found their beer (cause that’s all the Germans drank) too bitter for them so they added fruit syrup to the beer to sweeten it up and so now you can buy the Berliner Weisse in the stores. We tried it and hated it!!! Its just not beer!! And while I’m talking about beer, the price is so cheap!!! You can buy a 500mL bottle of beer for about €0.70, which is about NZ$1.40 or ZAR 7.50!!! It’s cheaper than water and also Coke!
After getting a coffee and some food in us we made our way on to the more recent historic parts of Berlin.
First stop was Checkpoint Charlie, which was a checkpoint through the wall. It was named as such because it was checkpoint C and under the American A-Alpha, B- Bravo, C-Charlie etc. The reason that this checkpoint is so famous is due to an incident that happened here. An American diplomat was passing from West Berlin to East Berlin to see a show with his wife when he was stopped. At the time as long as the diplomats were in their cars with the diplomatic license plates they did not need to provide any papers. This American was questioned about his papers and he refused as it was an infringement of his rights. West Berlin soldiers accompanied him across as was his right and to rub it in he crossed back and forth a few times that night. He told Sargent Clay about the incident and the next morning 10 American tanks were sent to the border fully loaded. In response, the next day the Soviets also sent 10 tanks down. They remained at either side of the border like this for 8 hours. It appeared as though war was going to break out right then. Neither party wanting war, the Soviets backed down first taking their tanks out, the Americans then followed.
Checkpoint Charlie.
Picture showing the face-off of the tanks.
Along checkpoint Charlie are boards with information on them and one of them is talking about successful and unsuccessful escapes through this checkpoint. Many people were hidden in the boots of cars or dressed up as soliders. Our guide told us a story about a Janitor working in one of the buildings right next to the wall who hid his family in a closet and then at night, when everyone had gone home, he took them up onto the roof and made like a flying fox and then swung over the wall.
Road side seller selling gas masks?!
On either side of the wall only a few hundred feet away from each other were the Stasi (Soviet Spies) and the CIA that used to spy over the wall into the building of the other.
CIA Building, on the top floor.
The Stasi's building in white, right across the wall from the CIA.
On the streets on Berlin there are brick paths illustrating where the wall once stood.
We followed this from Checkpoint Charlie to a portion of the wall that was still there.
The Berlin Wall. So much of it has been destroyed that it needs to be reinforced to stay up. There needs to be a wall to protect the wall...
What some people (me included) didn’t realise was that there were actually two walls. An inner wall and an outer wall and the bit in-between was known as the death strip, which was filled with traps, spot lights, barbed wire, shooters etc. The Death Strip was sometimes as wide as 1km! When the wall went up in the middle of the night they took absolutely no notice of where it was put. In some places it went straight through the middle of some houses or would separate family members by one street. Many lost their jobs as it was now on the wrong side of the wall. We saw only a small section of the wall and for something that had such an influence on this population I think Alisa was surprised at how small and unimposing it was. The top of the wall was rounded to prevent people getting a good grip on it. The soliders were ordered to “shoot to kill” anyone they saw trying to cross the wall. This fact has only been confirmed recently with the appearance of old papers from this time.
Building next to the wall where a Janitor and his family escaped over.
A traditional Berlin car. You can hire these for the day but if you are going 40km/h its a good day! It only has a little 2 stroke motor - just like on you lawn-mower.
From the wall we walked to a square that was the place of Soviets protesting their working conditions. The march began with just a couple of tradesman but as they marched the numbers grew into the thousands. The Communist Diplomat stationed in the building was afraid of the mob and sent out his secretary (who subsequently fled for his life too).
The square where the protesting took place. The picture on the wall (in the back of the photo) shows the Communist Propaganda of everyone happy and smiling and thriving with Communism. The picture on the ground shows the faces of the protesters, the reality of Communism. They were unhappy and poor. The picture of the protesters is the same size as the picture painted by the propaganda to highlight the stark contrast.
We then went on to see a parking lot… and like the old saying “if the car’s rocking, don’t come knocking!” Only, in Hitler’s time the rocking was caused by bombs dropped in the various air raids over the city and the knocking would have been on Hitler’s bunker doors. Yes, this car park behind several apartment buildings stands on the Hitler’s bunker, which is 11 meters below ground. Hitler committed suicide on this site in 1945 after the Soviets started to come in to Berlin.
This very normal looking car park is directly on top of Hitlers Bunker.
Showing the plans for his bunker. He didn't think the first one (the design on the right) was good enough so an adjoining portion was made that was deeper and had thicker walls.
At the time of his suicide he was suffering quite badly from Parkinson’s disease and was addicted to drugs (he was heavily into speed). He was also walking around with a heavy gait and dragging his left leg. Hitler also had a paranoia that everyone was after him (of course this was completely true!). He asked his closest confidents to burn his body till there was nothing left of him because he didn’t want anyone parading his body around as a trophy. Unfortunately they didn’t have enough gasoline so he wasn’t completely burnt. He was then buried just outside of the bunker (on ground level). When the Soviets took over Berlin they set about looking for Hitler’s remains. After about 10 days of frantic searching, they stumbled across his grave and this is where cover-ups and KGB-like things happen. It is said that the Soviets kept the skull but burnt his body and scattered his ashes so as not to have one place for fanatics to congregate. The records of this were only recently discovered after the KGB files were released. The skull seems to ‘disappear’ from 1945 and then suddenly ‘reappears’ in the 1970’s before disappearing again. As to where it is now is anyone’s guess.
The next stop for us was the Memorial to Murdered Jews in Europe. It was really eerie walking through the stelae (2,711 concrete blocks that each measure 0.95m in width and 2.38m in length but has varying heights and inclinations from 0.5˚ to 2˚) of this unique memorial. The reason for this design is open to interpretation, but the best one I heard was that around the outside of the memorial the stelae are really short and gets rather tall (up to 4.7m high) in the centre. This has been explained to represent that at the beginning of the war, not many Jews were killed but as the war wore on, the amount of Jews killed rose and then subsided towards the very end of the war. So this theory compares the stelae to bar graphs as such (this is only one persons interpretation).
Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.
This place is not without controversy: one, is that the Jews were not the only people to be discriminated by the Nazi’s so why is this only dedicated to them?! This has led to a Memorial for the Gay Community to be erected (no pun intended) not too far away in the park. There is also to be another Memorial for the Gypsy’s that were undermined. This leads to the question, “when does it stop?”! The second reason (and I think the most controversial) is to do with the anti-graffiti spray that is on the blocks. Now anyone that spends even 2 hours in Berlin will notice that any free portion of a wall or building has graffiti strewn across it. And yet, these stalae have not one trace of vandalism on it. You would think, as I did, that the youth and others respected the site and kept it clean (its not bordered off or anything so anyone can walk through at any hour so nothing stops them from graffitiing). The real reason however, is that they are all coated with an anti-graffiti spray. So, what the big controversy about that you ask? Well, the manufacturers that supplied the anti-graffiti spray are also the manufacturers and distributors of the gas, Sarin, that was used in the Nazi Concentration Camps during WWII!!!
There are crosses around the city showing people who died trying to cross the Berlin Wall at that spot.
Right next to this memorial is the infamous Brandenburg gate. Any famous speech that was said in Germany was surely filmed in front of this icon. President Kennedy delivered his many of his speeches here (he was something of an icon here in Berlin and in one of his speeches he said “Ich bin n Berliner!” What he meant to say was “I am a Berliner” but what he actually said, when translated, was “I am a Berliner.” What’s the difference? Well the Berliners refer to themselves as Berliners (no surprise) and a Berliner is a doughnut sold locally. So JFK said that he was a doughnut – funnily enough, JFKs political rivals in the USA blew this out of proportion but the Berliners understood him enough. President Reagan also delivered his famous line at this site, “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall!” alluding to the Berlin wall late in 1989. Hitler also used this “gate” as a backdrop for his speeches. He held a torch light parade here after gaining the position of Chancellor of Germany in 1933. But the history of this “gate” dates even further back to 1790’s. Many conquerors (including Napoleon and the Soviets) marched their army through these gates as a show of power.
Brandenburg Gate.
Just behind the “gate” is the famous Hotel Adlon. We all know this hotel from that scene of Michael Jackson dangling his baby over the balcony – that balcony was in the Hotel Adlon’s top suite.
Adlon hotel.
Our last stop on this tour was the Reichstag building. This is the Parliament Building that was built in 1894. Now we all know that Hitler did not like democracy and therefore the Parliament Building was not a building he used too often. On the night of 27 February 1933 the building was set alight. Hitler said that it was one man and he was a communist that was against the “Greater Good” of Germany. This incident caused Communist leaders and supporters to be detained at Concentration Camps (Concentration Camps only started exterminating people in the 1940’s). Thus, Hitler eliminated all other political rivals.
The Reichstag.
There are many new buildings that are near the Reichstag and they were all put up post WWII. Hitler levelled off all other buildings (except the Swiss Embassy – after all, how can you destroy the countries embassy that is storing your money?!) in the area because he had his own plans for the area but he never got to complete it.
The Swiss Embassy.
Germans are obsessed with great huge glass buildings – the more glass the building has the better. This only came about after the fall of the wall. I seem to think that is a way of showing the pursuit to be open (you can see what is happening in the building) after 5 decades of secretiveness (the SS (Nazi Storm Troopers), Gestapo (German spies) and the Stasi (Russian spies)).
At this point our tour concluded, 5 hours after we began but not once were we bored or tired – we just couldn’t believe that 5 hours had passed. Needless to say we still had bit of light remaining so we decided to go back and visit some places again. One of the Aussie girls that was on the tour and also stayed in the same hostel as us came along too.
We went back to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews in Europe, as there was a museum that was below the actual memorial that we wanted to see. There was TIGHT security to get into this place, you had to get scanned as well as baggage (which had to be checked in the luggage room). The first thing that you see is the statement on the wall saying:
“It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say.”
The survivors or families of the persecuted Jews set up the museum. It was defiantly a sobering museum you go from room to room and each thing you read just shocks you!
We also decided to go back and read all the boards that were set up by Checkpoint Charlie. We also passed through to West Berlin and there was a guy that set up a little booth on the other side. He was dressed in military uniform and was ‘selling’ stamps and visas to be put in your passport stating that you passed into West Berlin (apparently all legal).
By now it was dark and so we headed back to the hostel. We decided to drink some beer and then make our way to the erotic museum that was just downstairs from the hostel. So the 3 of us head into this ‘museum’ and it was more of erotic drawings and paintings. Some dating back to the 12th Century from the Japanese!!! They always depicted the men with MASSIVE wangs (often bigger than the character!). The ‘museum’ sounded worse than it actually was – all it was, was just art…
The Siegessaule or Berlin Victory Column.
German Chancellery, nicknamed the Washing Machine.
The next day we got up early and wanted to see the Reichstag again as there was a dome on the top that you can go up and see a 360˚ view of the city.
Walking up the Reichstag Dome.
The dome is actually open at the top.
The view from the top showing the Massive new Train Station they have.
The Brandenburg gate from the top.
"For the German People".
We were going to go up the TV Tower but this was free and we saw what we wanted to from here we went to a Soviet Memorial for the capture of Berlin. We were following a rough map given to us by our guide the day before so it wasn’t long before we were wandering aimlessly looking for the memorial. We stopped and asked a guy that was walking his dog and he was helpful enough to take us right to it (there was no way we would have found it, even considering there is a 10m high statue – it was nestled from the road by the trees). The guy turned out to be Turkish who has moved to Germany (Turks are the largest immigrants in Germany due to after WWII Germans needed workers and Turks needed work…). This memorial was magnificent! It was serene and peaceful and a great place to come and clear your mind.
Our Turkish guide walking his dog.
The entrance to the Memorial. There are statues of Soviet Soldiers kneeling and 'bowing' you into the memorial.
The statue representing the Soviet Union. In one hand he is carrying a baby, Germany, and with the other he is crushing the Swastika with his sword.
We were sad to leave Berlin as it really was an amazing city. But there were more places to see!
No comments:
Post a Comment