Discovering both sides of Berlin...traumatic past and sparkling future

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After arriving at Berlin's flashy Hauptbahnhof (train station) we dumped our bags and headed out to Oranienburg just north of the city where we spent the day at the Sachenhausen Concentration Camp. It was an eerie feeling walking around thinking about what went on here, right from the moment we walked through the gate with it's infamous "work shall set you free". They had a very comprehensive audioguide which gave us more information than we could really take on board about the cruel treatment of prisoners here. We wandered through all the different areas including the roll call area where people were tormented daily and sometimes hanged in public to make an example. The living arrangements were attrocious and it was easy to see how disease claimed so many lives. The most chilling sights were the death trench and station Z. The trench was the site of multiple murders where people were lined up and shot and station Z with it's gas chambers came into use once the 'extermination' policies started. We were moved by the whole scene and spent a few minutes contemplating all the mass graves, both from the Nazis and also the Soviets who used the camp after the war, killing thousands more people.

The next day we started a walking tour of Berlin which was very interesting an informative. We started at Potzdamer Platz which used to be part of the death strip in the Berlin Wall days but is now a mass of impressive modern buildings built as part of the post-wall rejuvenation. Not far away we went past the site of Hitler's bunker where he spent his last days, and then on to the Holocaust Memorial. This had a great information centre that talked about the 5-6 million Jews killed, with individual and family stories which made it a bit more real. We also saw the Adlon Hotel (famous for Michael Jackson's baby-dangling incident). Eventually we arrived at 'Checkpoint Charlie' the major border crossing between East and West Berlin. There was lots of information about the wall including when and why it was built, famous confrontations, the people who died trying to flee across it, and the events that led to it coming down.

Day 3 we firstly went to the Reichstag building to climb the glass dome above the parliament before continuing our walking tour. For lunch we went to a kebab place that apparently has the best kebabs in the world (they were pretty good, we both agreed they were up there with the best). Later in the day we went out to the East Side Gallery, one of the few remaining sections of the wall which has murals on it. At 1.3km, it is the longest remaining section as most of the rest was used in roads. After the wall we visited the Deutsches History Museum to get some information on the lesser known parts of Germany's history prior to the 20th Century.

On our final day Karen went to the Pergamon Museum but Mick decided he was a bit museumed out. It was pretty interesting with a restored ancient Greek altar and the entrance gate to Babylon.

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Photos

Work shall set you free
The entrance to Sachenhausen Concentration Camp... here work mostly led to death.

The death trench
This was quite traumatic to visit as it the place where hundreds were murdered.

Holocaust memorial in Berlin
They had a very moving information centre below this.

Checkpoint Charlie
The major crossing between East and West Germany