Well, today was a great way to end my Berlin tour. I started out by meeting Amy for a walking tour at 11AM. We took off and spent about 45 minutes in the very first square where we met, the guide was very informative and had a great way of bringing the history of Berlin to life. I learned so much that I never would have if I didn’t go on this tour.
The statue on top of the Brandenburg Gate was the goddess of peace, back in the day France came with Napoleon and took it! He placed in right in the center of the Louvre, Germany didn’t like this too much. So a while later they surrounded the Louvre with secret service men and took the statue back! Quite a funny story, and now, it is the goddess of victory. The Berliners joke that she is looking down upon the French embassy, well, because she really is!
Then the president of Albania drove by… no big deal…
The holocaust memorial was next. This was cool to see, there are thousands of pillars going up and down and tilting and the ground is like a roller coaster! It is so abstract; the architect resides in NYC, and it is said that when he left, he didn’t really give a good explanation of what this memorial meant. So, the two main ideas that stick are 1) that each column represents a certain amount of Jewish families killed during the holocaust, and 2) that the nature of the ground and the pillars all around you makes you feel very uncomfortable and discombobulates you – just as the Jews felt when they were taking in the night to the concentration camps. As you can tell if you watch my video, this is a huge deal, with many ins-and-outs, and up-and-downs!
This piece of dirt is Hitler’s Bunker, this is where he committed suicide. He instructed the body guards to burn the bodies – but his skull and lower jaw were found here. His dental assistant was taken captive, and they were able to identify this as Hitler.
Berlin is still showing some of the results of the world wars … if you can see in these pictures, there are still bullet holes in some of the walls. That is history right there.
This is actually a piece of the wall that isn’t fixed up and made to look nice.
Checkpoint Charlie – this was the last checkpoint to fall, when East Berlin rushed into Western Berlin. It is guarded by the Allies, aka USA.
This is the French cathedral that was built… the Berliners complained about this after it was put up, there is an identical one directly across the square dedicated to German, HA!
This is pretty cool actually, it is just an empty space in the ground. But if you can see closely, there are selves down there, just enough space to hold 20,000 books. This represents that 20,000 books that were burnt, this included Jewish authors and basically any ‘racially impure’ authors and books.
We met up with Natasha and Becca around 6 to spend the rest of the day and get dinner. Natasha took us to a really really non-tourist area. It was great. We also ended up finding a giant bench, awesome? This was all on our way to our final destination, a wine house, it was a 2 euro entry free. Then 2 euro for all you can drink wine, and 5 euro for all you can eat food. These prices were just recommended, we ended up throwing about 6-7euro each. But it was well worth it. Good friends, good food, good wine. Good night Berlin!
No comments:
Post a Comment