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Published: March 10th 2010
BERLIN Day 41
Today, Marcos and I did the tourist thing as Carlos and Paulo cleaned their flat and visited with their landlord to tie up any loose ends before their flight to Dublin then Sao Paulo in two days time. We first headed to the Brandenburg Tor (east-west gate). From there we walked past the memorial to the victims who were killed trying to cross from east to west. I found this memorial pretty pathetic. It was literally nothing compared to the extravagant soviet memorials found in the near area. If you look at my pictures you will see the victims’ memorial nothing but a green fence with plain white crosses attached to it but the Soviet memorials are massive towering gold painted tributes. I understand that the upkeep of the soviet memorials was part of the peace deal for unification of Germany but really can’t you add a nice memorial for the victims as well?!?!? From the pathetic memorial we went to see the Reichstag and then walked around the park in the area.
We then headed towards AlexanderPlatz for some lunch before heading on to the Berlin Wall, East Side Gallery. The road to Alexanderplatz
is lined with numerous beautiful buildings that house museums and galleries. The Wall itself was interesting to see. That such an innocent looking slab of concrete could have represented so much darkness is hard to imagine. But now the street art the covers it is very nice to see. As we finished walking along the 1.3km wall, Carlos called and so we met him at the train station before we headed back out of the cold for some warm dinner.
I am really glad that I had the chance to visit with Carlos and his brother Paulo before they headed back to Brazil. As Esther had spoken so much about both of us to each of us it was very easy and comfortable to get along. They are incredibly kind, helpful, and considerate of others. I hope that I can one day repay their hospitality in like.
As it was very cold and I didn’t get to cover much ground in Berlin I will come back on my way to Denmark as I had originally planned.
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Kathy
non-member comment
when east and west were....
somewhat still segregated I was there. (we actually we got to stand on the wall as they had just decided that the wall was to come down),....and they had those exact same crosses on the fence. Your right, that is disappointing after all these years. The wall seems to be really done up with a lot of nice art work though?!? Anyway, keep on keepin'on! Enjoying your blogs.