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Published: August 5th 2010
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Statue
on Museum Island. Of some king. I'll look it up eventually. I had sort of intended to go on one of Kate's tours. I brought it up, she looked at her work schedule, and promptly advised against it. She was scheduled to do the Third Reich tour today, which is fine if you're into the Third Reich, but if you are looking for a more general introduction to Berlin, not so much. Instead, she told me which guides from her company would be good to tour with, and also pointed out a partner company that did walking tours. I chose the latter and am quite glad I did.
The tour was meant to be a four-hour tour, starting at 10:30. The guide was fabulous, really knew his stuff, and I know we finished more than 30 minutes later than intended. But I'd never have guessed if I hadn't looked at my watch. The tour focused on East Berlin, which is fine - lots to talk about there! - but gave an intro to the city starting back in medieval times. From the start, we headed over to Museum Island, which is a story in and of itself - from imperial/colonial ambitions, to reconstruction after the second World War, the museums have
Kate giving her tour
of Third Reich Berlin been through a lot.
We headed past the Dom, into the Lustgarten, and again learned about how Berlin is re-constructing its past. Across the street from the garden is a massive construction site where an old communist-era government building has been torn down and they are re-constructing a palace that originally stood on the site. Next stop was Bebelplatz, where the Nazis staged their massive book burning. The memorial there is striking - empty shelves that could have housed all those books.
French influence on the city was discussed in the Gendarmenmarkt, and then we wandered past an amazing chocolate shop (which does awesome sculptures out of chocolate) to Checkpoint Charlie. Or at least the tourist reconstruction that is Checkpoint Charlie. More interesting were the information panels set up about the Wall, and the cobbling in the street outlining where the wall stood, as well as the section of wall that still remains nearby. The site of Hitler's bunker was nifty (I say only slightly sarcastically, as the bunker has been collapsed and the earth above is now a car park), as was the old Luftwaffe Ministry building. I guess that's the thing about Berlin. There might not
be lots of old stuff to see, but there's plenty to talk about, as was the case at sites where the Death Strip is still measurable, an at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. We finished off at the Brandenburg Gate, which was lovely.
When the tour was done, I revisited some of the sites we'd seen, and actually took the time to explore them a bit further. I actually read the information panels by Checkpoint Charlie, for example, which I'd obviously not had time to do on the tour. I went to the Topography of Terror open air museum that we'd passed (which, sadly, was extremely text-heavy and after a short while I found myself just looking at the pictures). I wandered back down Unter den Linden, and sat in the grounds of Museum Island for a bit, before heading back to Kate's for another quiet evening.
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