Berlin!

We finally made it! After over 24 hours of traveling, including not getting a seat on my flight, we finally arrived in Berlin yesterday (9/26). We had to navigate the public transit system from the airport to the Sunflower Hostel, which was surprisingly easy to do. We made it to the hostel around 3pm, but were so exhausted from traveling, that we just napped and planned out what we were going to do the following day.

 

Graffiti is widely accepted in Berlin:

We decided on a whim to do a bike tour of Berlin. It actually turned out to be an amazing tour and we had a very informative and educated guide. He was actually from England, but has been living in Berlin for the past 9 years studying modern history. We started at the Alexanderplatz square, which gave us our first views of the TV tower.

Next to the square sat an old church and a large fountain. From the square you could see dozens of cranes throughout the city. Our guide informed us that for the past decade Berlin has been under rapid expansion/construction despite its debt problems.

From Alexanderplatz we headed over to Bebelplatz. Bebelplatz was the site in 1933 where a group of Nazi students burned 20,000 “un-german” books written by Jews, homosexuals, and communists. There a glass pain on the ground at the edge of the square; if you look down into it, it is an empty room of bookshelves that could hold 20,000 books. A quote on a plaque sits in the center of the square; “Where they burn books, they will eventually burn people”. Eerily, this was written by Heinrich Heine many decades before the Holocaust.

Our next stop was another square and then Checkpoint Charlie. This was one of the major checkpoints between east and West Berlin during the Cold war after Nazi Germany had been defeated. Our tour guide did a great job at explaining the history here. Basically, East Berlin was controlled by the communist USSR and West Berlin by the US. Checkpoint Charlie was the barrier along the Berlin wall that all foreigners had to go through to travel between the east and west. There were many army standoffs a the checkpoint, and anyone coming close to the USSR side of the Berlin wall without going through the checkpoint was sure to be shot dead on the spot.

 

 

Just up the road from the checkpoint there is a portion of the wall still remaining. Next we biked to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This memorial was quite strange, in that it was just a bunch of grey blocks ranging from 1 foot high to 10 feet high. There were close to 3, 000 blocks in the square; you could get lost for an hour or so within them. There are no markings on the blocks. Some people interpret them as coffins/grave stones and others as train box cars (heading off to the concentration camps).

From here we biked through the Tiergarten, which is one of the largest gardens in Europe. The ride was quite beautiful, with small ponds, statues, rivers, and even a zoo along the way. We stopped at a nice Beer garden along the river for lunch and then headed to the Victory Column/“chick on a stick”. This monument in the center of the park marks the Germans defeat over the French in 1870. The column is decorated in French canyons to rub in the defeat.

 

 

Our second to last stop was the Brandenburg gate. This gate was built in 1790 and is the only surviving gate of the old city. Randomly, in the square near the gate, we also saw the hotel where Michael Jackson held his baby over the balcony!

Our final stop on the bike tour was at the current Chancelor’s building and at the current parliament building. Since I was the “follower” on the bike tour that made sure everyone stayed together, Jeremy and I split a free beer and walked over to the Deutches Museuem after the tour. In Germany, you can drink on the streets at any time. The museum was a history of Germany from ancient times to 1994, when power was returned to the Germans after the Cold War. After returning back to the hostel, we made it out for some locally brewed cider and currywurst!

Chancelor's Building:

Parliament Building:

Old Church:

During our second day in Berlin, we checked out the East Side Gallery in the morning. This is the longest remaining section of the Berlin wall. The wall is covered in mural paintings and graffiti. The wall runs along the spree river for about a half mile or so. We walked the entire section and then headed to the north side of town to an outdoor market.

The market was full of clothing, antiques and food/beer gardens. We wandered around for a bit, got a bratwurst, and watched a few musical acts. It seems like everyone in Berlin either dresses like a hippie or a punk metal rocker!

 

Our last stop for the day was the Topography of Terror. This free museum documents the terror and hatred of the Nazi regime. It documents via pictures and writings the cruelty of the Nazis. There were pictures of mass graves, shootings/executions, labor and concentration camps, and German soldiers laughing and have a good time amidst all of the terror. It was quite a gut-retching exhibit. Overall Berlin has left a lasting impression on me. I wasn’t aware of how much recent history has actually gone on in the city, and I learned quite a lot about the Cold War and the importance of the Berlin wall. The most interesting thing about the city for me is, how new of a city Berlin actually is. Full control of the city wasn’t given to the Germans until 1999, which makes Berlin less than 20 years old. To see the amount of growth and stability such a young city can have is quite amazing, especially when you take into account it’s very dark past. The city today has an interesting mix of characters on the streets; but they all have one thing in common, a warm beer in hand!