Welcome to Berlin!! I freaking loved Berlin and all the history there. Remnants of Nazi Germany and Soviet Communism are definitely present and were very interesting.
Place: Gestapo Museum and Checkpoint Charlie
Location: Berlin
Cost: Free and 6.50€
Once we arrived in Berlin we jumped off the bus right at the
Gestapo Museum. It is a neat museum, being mostly outside. A long piece of the Berlin Wall runs behind a
long wall that tells the history of Berlin and the Gestapo and Hitler. Pretty
much covers everything, and it is in the downstairs of what remains of the
Gestapo Headquarters. The facts were
fascinating. Pictures and little blips
describe many things I have never thought about or even heard about when
talking about WWII. One part I thought
very interesting was a display that said all the National Holidays. Of course
there was Hitler’s birthday, but then there were all these other weird holidays
like “Everyone must eat Potatoes day” to save money and a variation on Mother’s
day that really only supported true Aryan mothers. I could have spent forever
there, but the next place we went was even better- Checkpoint Charlie. It blew my mind! I never knew 90% of the stuff I read about in
that museum. And that’s what I did- read
and read and read all the interesting information about all these people who
had escaped East Germany. Granted I had
to find it first among the 4 different languages that everything was written
in. I learned so much about how Berlin was actually split up and how/why people
escaped. I seriously could not believe all the escape stories I was reading,
and the pictures were unreal. Suitcases,
cars, air balloons, grocery bags, everything was used. Necessity is the mother
of all invention; so unbelievably true.
I have a 100% new perspective on Berlin post WWII now. And I love that. That is what traveling and
seeing new things is all about.
The Berlin Wall!
Gestapo Museum, you can see the wall up behind
Quick dinner at Mcdonalds, I mean who can resist being able to say they ate at Mcdonald's in Berlin?! And it was right across the street from checkpoint charlie!
Checkpoint!
An old section of the wall, where it ran. It says "Berlin Mauer 1961-1989"
Our hotel was super nice. Yay!
It kinda felt like a cruise ship though, a little squished in there!
This is the building where the Berlin mission home first was. This building was untouched by the war and is still in its original design.
Place: Gedenskӓtte
Plötzensee
Location: Berlin
Cost: Free
I visited the place where Helmuth Hubner’s execution took
place. It was at a prison that is still
used today as a juvenile detention center. I don’t think I could go there as a juvenile,
because I would think about all the horrible things that happened there, the
people who died. The building where
Helmuth was killed is right at the front, right after you walk through the
gate. You walk in the building and it is a small rectangular room There were 3
wreaths at the far wall and then another on the spot in the middle where the
guillotine must have been. Helmuth was
only in that room for 18 seconds.
Brother Minert counted 18 seconds as we stood there. As soon as he
started I could picture Helmuth walking in the door. I could see him and
remembered his story, the book I read this summer, and what he was fighting
for. I could see him approaching his death with no fear, but with confidence
that he had done what he thought was right and that now he was going to meet
his maker. And then he said 18. Done. Just that quick his life was ended. How
amazing is it that the Nazi government was so terrified of the work of a 17
year old boy that they had to put him to death. I am amazed by Helmuth’s
strength and perseverance and greatly admire him, and his two friends.
This is the Prison were Helmuth Hubner was killed
"The sacrifices of the Hitler dictatorship of the years 1939-1945"
This is the room where Helmuth was excecuted. He was only in here for 18 seconds.
On to the Victory Tower! built in like 1865 it commemorates all the big victories for Germany.
Can't image being in a crowd like that around this tower.
Reichstag aka German White house
Brandenburg Gate! yes me at famous brandenburg gate! that napoleon and hitler and everyone paraded through. It also came to represent the division of East and West Berlin.
Interesting Holocaust Memorial sight. The ground goes down and the blocks get taller, so while walking inside you get very disoriented and it is very hard to see. you feel like someone is watching you or could pop out at you at any second. Probably pretty similar to what displaced Holocaust vicitms were feeling like.
My favorite image of berlin. Russian soldier escaping East Germany.
The Fuhrerbunker.
Underground here is where Hitler hid at the end of the war, and committed suicide. The Russians totally destroyed the whole bunker. Crazy to image everything that happened down there- everything I read about in the book Hitler's Last Secretary.
Soccer court..... I see these everywhere....
Jewish Museum
Interesting part. You had to walk across all these faces on the floor. They were metal and made a lot of noise and echoed in the small room.
Durum for dinner!
We met up with some of the Minert's friends and they gave us a tour of the old berlin. They shoes us an area of the town I never would have known existed. Its where there are houses and then houses behind, creating all these little courtyard areas. After the war these areas were really run down, but recently the government has put a lot of money into rebuilding them and now they are the hottest place to live. They have really upscale shops on the ground level.
I just loved all the ivy!
Sweet playground
Old part that hasn't been redone.
We passed a bonbon shop, a candy shop! He was really making the hard candy right there and we got to try some. Yummy!
I bought harry potter 1 in german :)
Essay 22
Place: Underground bunker
Location: Berlin
Cost: 5€
We got to our site a little early so we had time to climb to
the top of a flack tower before the tour.
It didn’t seem as big as the one in Vienna, but was up on a hill and all
surrounded by tress. There were rock climbing rocks on all the sides of the
tower with hooks and carabineers and everything. It’s an interesting way of
putting an old useless building back into use.
After a quick look from the top of the tower we headed to our Bunker
tour! We entered the bunker right in the ubahn station entryway. We went
through this little door, something you would walk past everyday and never know
this whole world exists down below. So
we entered this maze of concrete rooms underground, by the subways. We saw a toilet room, a bedroom, a hospital
room, and items found while rebuilding/digging in Berlin. The rooms were dark, all concrete and
cold. There was writing on the walls
telling how many people should be in each room. The guide told us how quickly
these numbers could be changed, painted over and the ‘capacity’ of rooms more
than doubled. Crazy how ‘safety’ measure can be changes so easily. I just couldn’t imagine going down into that
bunker. When the ubahn drove by I thought
the noise and shaking was eerie. If I had to be down there for hours or days-
that would take a toll on me. I can understand why so many people didn’t bother
going down, especially if there were false alarms. The guide told us about how the Berlin
Underworld Society is still looking and trying to find things under Berlin.
They showed us some old cabinets they found in the last 20 years in a bunker
that have names of employees from a company. This proves that this company used
forced slave labor back in the day, so the few of these people that are still
alive today can get compensation. The other sweet fact is that in the two most
important rooms in the bunker, the hospital room and the room at the exit, are
not completely dark. The walls were
painted with a special phosphorus mixture that actually allows the walls to
glow! The wall absorbs the light partials and kind of glow/reflects it for
about 30 minutes after the light source is gone. He showed us with a really
bright light, it left his hand print on the wall!
Flacktower
Bunker bathroom
Submarine decoder machine
Real items soldiers had, found under ground
Bunker
This is how all of berlin communicated- tubes like at the bank!!
this is the entry door
See thats the door way down there, you would never know a whole bunker is down there!
Essay 23
Place: Pergamon Museum
Location: Museum Island Berlin
Cost: 5€
During
Berlin free time I chose to go to the Pergamon Museum. It is a large museum that holds whole
buildings from Greece and Babylon! There I saw the Alter of Zeus and the Gate
to a marketplace and some huge blue arch gate from Babylon. The funny thing is
a girl in my group, Becca, has been to the real city of Pergamon in Turkey and
nothing is really there! Because it is all here in Berlin! It was fun for her
to see the whole picture and great for me to get to see such amazing
architecture up close. It is so awing. How did they stack those columns so high in
100BC? I have no idea but it sure is amazing to see! I also wandered around Berlin some more. I
saw the Berlinerdom and the University, were Hitler burned all the books ceremonially
(and this is where Indiana Jones sees Hitler… we were joking about that the
whole time). I walked around looking in
shops and stopped at another church. It
has an old medieval painting inside, Tode Tanzen, Dance of death. It was kind of hard to see, but it’s there!
And it’s from the middle ages! I have
really enjoyed seeing all the varied things Berlin had to offer.
On the island
Inside at zeus's alter
They look small way up high but are huuuuuuuuge up close!!
The detail in the sculpting is amazing
Market gate
Weird animal...
Gate from Babylon!
can't remember what that one is... :)
Berlinerdom
Love these!
University
Memorial at the university, empty bookshelves
The most legit book store I have ever been in!
Medieval Church with the 1873 tv tower in the back
Can you see the skeleton guy in the middle?
This is what it is suppose to be like
This is the airport that the candy bombers came to and from
That is Poland across the way!
me. just chillin in poland. nbd.
We were going to be entering Czech again so I was organizing my money, so here is another picture what it looks like
Where the LDS church use to be in the Germany town Gurlitz
(I was going to write an except of this one too, but I just can't do it right now :) But I really loved my experiences here, learning all about the church. So look for that entry coming up soon!)
You can see where the church sign use to hang!
Brother Leahman, on the left, showed us all around
Thats the real pulpit! That is were President Monson made his prophesy about the German saints. That they could have all the blessings all other faithful saints had. aka a temple.
Durum for dinner!
Suuuuuuper sketch hotel in Brno Czech. It is part of the old GDR, east side. nasty.
You can't tell but its nasty.
Why is there a cage on our bathroom ceiling?!?!
Video of the super sketch elevator at the super sketch hotel... if you can call it that. Oh and breakfast was discusting! for the record yogurt in czech is nasty!
We made a quick pit stop so we could run across the border to Slovakia!
In slovakia!
Yay back to Austria!!
So sunday night we had dinner in Willi's hometown restaurant. I still can't believe he did this for us, he was so gernerous! We each got two HUGE pieces of schnitzel!
You can't really tell but this is Willi's huge dog, who was sooo excited to see him!
This was probably the most amazing 10 days of my life! I got to see so many things,
not to mention so many countries!
