Berlin!!

  Berlin, Germany
Monday, August 18, 2008

From Paris, I boarded the train to Berlin, with a layover in Cologne. Nothing much to see there, so we'll go straight to Berlin.

The historic Brandenburger Gate, where President Regan said "Gorbachev, tear down this wall," and, more importantly, where David Hasselhoff, in a jacket studded with flashing lights, sang to the Germans as the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.


Berlin is a very dynamic city, a combination of old and new. Much of the city was destroyed during during WWII. The Berlin Wall also complicated things.




The East Side Gallery, the largest remaining portion of the Berlin Wall. The East side of Berlin was controlled by the Soviets, while the west was divided into American, British, and French sectors.






Checkpoint Charlie, one of the border crossing areas in Berlin.




Germany is the land of beer and sausage, bratwurst, currywurst, the list goes on! Nothing like a healthy, well-balanced lunch. Haha.


It really didn't matter what I ate though, with the amount of walking I did, I burned off everything anyway. Berlin also has green beer, not sure what's in it (should I have asked?), but it was tasty.




This is the Jewish Holocaust memorial. These hollow concrete pillars have an anti-graffiti coating and are supposed to resemble tombstones.


On my last day in Berlin, I went to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. During the years 1936-1945, the Nazis imprisoned over 200,000 people there, 50,000 of which were murdered. What's even more crazy is that this was happening during the Berlin Olympics in 1936, yet people were oblivious to the fact that these atrocities were being committed.




Most of the buildings don't exist anymore, but you can still see the watchtowers and the wall.


Of the buildings that remain, some have been converted into museums, offering detailed accounts of the lives of the prisoners. Others have been restored to their original state. Here are Barracks 38 & 39, where some of the many prisoners were held.






What an eerie experience. I have more pictures of things like the execution trench and the cremation ovens, which I'll show you when I get home.

The Reichstag, location of the German parliament.




Phew, haha, this is gonna take me a while. I have over 1000 pictures to sort through! Next destination, Prague.