I stood on Hitlers bunker

---

Day 11




Today i discovered how delicious croissants are with nutella, lets just say i very much enjoyed todays breakfast.

First stop today was the wansee conference room. It took us over an hour and forty five minutes to get there, we had to take the tube and hop a bus, it was just not pleasant. At the wansee conference, hitler decided what to do with all of the jews in the country. What is really sad is that our ride to the place took longer than the actual meeting and they were deciding what to do with a whole race of people. The museum itself was nothing special except for this one room. This room had the minutes from the meeting which included the invitation, the cancelltion letter since it was scheduled for the day that hiter was going to declare war on the states, the new invitation, who was oresent and all that was said. Most people just passed on by but i read through all of it and it was so interesting. The thought really far into it and knew what to do with those married to Jews, their children, those married to the children of half jews etc, it was very detailed. Right before you left, there were all these quotes from different peope, some were relatives of people close to hitler, others had survived the holocaust and still others were relatives of survivors. One quote that stood out to me was "whenever i would get a bad grade or something on a test my mom would look at me and say 'i survived aucshwitz for this'?!". That seemed quite harsh to me.

We had the afternoon free so Peter left us at Hackescher Markt which is this giant outdoor mall. It was so cold outside we just went to the firstcafe we saw to eat. It ended up having over half of our group in it because we were all freezing. I got some hot chocolate and some yummy spinach lasagna.




We then went on the hunt for chocolate. We hadthe hardest time finding some and i was like we need to ask someone. So i went into a bakery and used my handy dandy new phrase and the lady spoke a little english and was able to tell us that there was chocolate across the street. Our group practically bought the guy out of milka. I got it because i already knew it was delicious because way back when scott brought some back from germany.




We then went to Kaiser's which is basically a supermarket and ended up buying way more chocolate. We were supposed to buy dinner but we got distracted and forgot so we grabbed dinner in the hotel. It was expensive but delicious, and whats awesome is thatwe all always share. I also got a hotel berlin berlin drink which i have no idea what was in it, but it was yummy!



Day 12



Today we got to sleep in! Ahhh what a treat, it was only til 9 but it was nice. we left at 10ish and took a short bus ride to the German resistance memorial. This is where Stauffenberg worked, he was one of the people who tried to assassinate Hitler by putting a bomb under his table. He tried this one year before the end of the war, however, had he succeeded the lives of 2 million jews would have been saved. Hitler did not die because Stauffenberg put the bomb at his seat during one meeting and got up and left but it was inthe way so people started moving it down the table. By the time it exploded, it was on the opposite side of the table from hitler and the oak table flew up and stood in front of hitler blocking all the shards from hitting him. Stauffenberg heard the bomb explode and ran back to his office without checking to make sure people died. The survivors quickly discovered it was he who tried to assassinate hitler and they found him at his office. They lined him and his conspirators up in the courtyard and shot them all. The movie valkyrie with brad pitt is based off this event.

This was just a memorial outside, inside there was a museum. We had a tour guide here because all of the stories were in german so we obviousy couldnt understand. It was actually pretty cool. They also had two rooms in english, one if them had bios of some of the resisters, including the scholl siblings who distibuted flyers at their school against hitler and were caught because they were throwing the flyers off the balcony. They were only my age, and they were dead, it really makes you think whether you would have had the guts at our age to do something like that.




We went to the mall at potzdamer platz and i just needed some normal food so i went to subway. Yeah didnt really think that one through, i dont know how to say thinks in german, but it turned out fine yay! We also went to another chocolate store, it was really expensive, except for the broken pieces! Woo so i bought one of those and it was yummy!

We then went to the murdered jews of europe memorial. It had different blocks of concrete all different sizes, peter told us about different bids for the space and i liked those better. One had the names of concentration camps cut out of the concrete so when the sun was shining the names would shine on people, which i think would be cool . This was probably my least favorite memorial of them all. It seemed more like a maze/playground than a memorial. There was however a nice museum down underground. It had a lot of stories about people in concentration camps. There was this one room that had all 4 walls with names projected on it. Coming out of the speakers were the stories of different people in the holocaust, survivors and victims. The plaque said that in order to read off all the stories, it would take six years and just about 8 months. That to me is just astonishing and its nice to know that we know that many stories about people.




Unfortunately, i accidently left a glove here and i only noticed it after i was back above ground, i would have gone back down, but we had to go and when youwent town you had to go through security, it just wasnt worth it, i hardly ever wear them.




To end the night, we went to the Brandenburg gate. Peter was talking about how only royalty was allowed to go through the center aisle....well guess who else went through the center aisle 😊 Peter also said that they even build the wall around it to keep it on the eastern side. Across the street today was fashion week and axe body spray had people in austronaut costumes which was hilarious.

After that, peter dropped us off in some french shopping area and no way i was shopping. There were two ways to get home but we decided to walk further and take he u2 because the other way required switching trains and the german just gets confusing. then i got noodles for dinner again and called it a night!



Day 13




Today we had another waking tour by this guy Finn, hes from northern ireland so i loved listening to him talk. We had a third Reich tour and saw a bunch of buildings that hitler used and that were used by the Nazis. The tour was actually interesting so im really glad we ended up having it. We went to where hitlers house used to be and stood on top of his bunker which was kinda cool. The entrance to the bunker has been closed off because they are afraid people who like hitler will go there and celebrate on his birthday or something.




After the tour was over, i wandered off with beth, brissa and brandy. We had lunch at a cafe and then went shopping in the mall and i got this adorable scarf! We did more shopping but nothing really important. We did however go back to the chocolate store and the lady was really mean this time. I think she thought we were shoplifting because she kept pushing baskets at us so that we could put our stuff in there and she was kind of obnoxious. We went back to the hotel and took a nap and went down to the bar later for food and drinks. Traveling day tomorrow!

---