Advertisement
may 21, 2011 018
Our hostel, an old monasteryOkay, first and foremost- this entry is going to be insanely long. I should start with a few things to preface it.
Item one: I LOVE THIS CITY. Berlin is alive and amazing and wonderful.
Item two: THERE ARE LIKE 250 PICTURES FROM THIS WEEKEND I am trying to choose just the most interesting ones or the ones with me in them, lol, so I apologize in advance.
We got up bright and early (seriously, like 7 AM) and had breakfast at our hostel and then set out for our tour, which started by basically getting to Berlin Hauptbahnhof, which is the main station. Dr. G told us about the history about the West and the East, and the division, and cool stuff like how nothing was built next to the wall when it was there so it was just empty buildings or empty land. Then we hit the government sector and he showed us the buildings there, like the parliament building and where the chancellor works. That was pretty cool. We saw the American Embassy, too.
Then we hit the Brandenburg Gates and right outside there was one of the places where they had stones set
may 21, 2011 019
The original entrance to the station that was bombed- this is all that's left standing down to mark where the Berlin Wall had been. The coolest part about this was getting to stand on either side of where the wall was for so long! (Definitely look at the picture) The gate was cool, too; there was just so much going on, and people and a festival and music and dancers, and there were two guys dressed in American & German uniforms with flags posing for pictures with tourists. It was very, very neat to see how the history interacted with the current German culture and population. And obviously, everything was gorgeous, because the architecture is so cool.
After that, we went to the Holocaust Memorial. It was also very cool, but walking through it definitely gave me chills. It was just sobering and emotional to go through it. It's built extremely neat- a bunch of blocks in non-uniform shape, put into lines, and the floor goes up and down as the blocks get higher and higher, so it's like when you walk in, suddenly it's above your head, even though you couldn't remember it getting that high, which I believe is supposed to symbolism how the Holocaust happened, with things getting terrible before people
may 21, 2011 020
Berlin Hauptbahnhof realized it. Very, very powerful. I almost started crying just from walking through that, which bodes well for when we go and visit the concentration camp in a few weeks.
We then traveled to Potsdamer Platz, which is where they had the final bits of the actual Berlin Wall set up, and a checkpoint there with a guy dressed like he would be who would stamp our passports with all the stamps we would have actually gotten had we traveled from the East to the West back when the wall was standing. SO COOL. And his English was great, so he was explaining what all the stamps were as he did them. I definitely got my passport done. 😊 It's not like I really go anywhere anyway, haha, the blank pages might as well be used for something awesome!
We hit stuff like the Sony Center, which is this huge amazing structure with food and shops and a movie theater, and then we continued on through some more buildings and blocks until we got to the Department of Finance, I believe?, which is only worth mentioning because they kept the side of the building intact where all the
bullet holes hit from the street fight in Berlin in 1945. That was cool. Then we got to Checkpoint Charlie! The Allied checkpoint. They had it set up like it would have looked back when it was operating, and they had more guys in uniform posing with flags. I didn't end up getting a piece of the wall or anything because we didn't go into the gift shop, but it was a really cool place to see, since they've kept things sort of looking like they did in the spirit of the city's history, and I love that.
Dr. G took us to a square near Humboldt University law library where the Nazis burned the books in 1939, and showed us the area of the library that is underground but has empty shelves to symbolize what happened there. Again, awesome architecture and buildings everywhere. We passed by the Berlin Cathedral and took some pictures, but we were starving and had been walking for about 6 hours or so by this point, so we went past it and got some lunch at a nice cafe on a nearby street.
Then we went back and we paid to go INTO
may 21, 2011 030
Standing on both sides of where the Berlin Wall was! the Berlin Cathedral, which was AMAZING. Holy crap the architecture and the frescoes and the interior of this- totally, totally mind-blowing. You were allowed to hike up to the dome and go outside around it, and only about 6 of us actually did it, but SCREW THOSE STAIRS, MAN. I mean come up, you are going to have to work to get those shots, and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. So, so, so cool. Seeing so much of the city from above! aksjfkdsjfkdjsa so much love (I took a lot of pictures in the Cathedral, I'm sorry)
After this, we were very tired, and so we decided to take a scenic boat ride starting next to the cathedral and just sort of cruising around wherever the river went. Since the tour was all in German, I just put my ipod on and relaxed, and it was gorgeous and the rocking made me want to sleep, and I just really, really loved my life at that moment. It was so ... I don't know. Definitely an amazing time-out in the middle of an amazing city and I was just completely at peace with everything haha.
This was when my
may 21, 2011 032
Brandenburg Gate camera basically died, but it was also when we went off to old West Berlin just to see some major shopping street, and we'd been on our feet for almost 11 hours, and I was exhausted and didn't care what we were looking at anymore, so this part runs together anyway. We made our way back to the Sony Center for dinner and some AMAZING juice + beer, and we ended up sitting and talking with Dr. G for almost three hours just hanging out and enjoying the weather and the sights and the beer (we had a lot).
Actually, this is important, because he asked Anna and I what we thought about the program, and we finally got to voice all of our problems and concerns that we've been having this last semester. I felt like he really listened and we got his side of things, and I think there's just a lot more mutual respect now between us which is good, even if he can't do much to fix things because of massive budget limitations and such. It was good to air our grievances. And of course, the rest of the conversation was lovely, too, with the
may 21, 2011 034
Holocaust Memorial others who were there (there were about 7 of us, and the rest went back to the hostel).
We finally set back out around midnight- LONGEST DAY EVER. Anyway, it was AMAZING and it was wonderful and I seriously love this city.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.147s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 13; qc: 49; dbt: 0.096s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
