Days 19-22- Berlin

Well I guess it's been a couple days since I've posted. Last you heard we were on our way to Berlin for two nights, we wound up spending three nights there & now we're in Munich. We got on a bus a little after 8 this morning and got here shortly before 5. I'm sure you're all surprised after my last post that I would consent to bus travel again, but it was less than half the price of a train and a fourth of the cost of a flight, so 8 hour bus ride it is. It wasn't a bad ride at all, the bus was less than half full so we each had 2 seats to ourselves, and I guess Germans run a little bigger than Greeks or Spaniards, because there was actually an appropriate amount of legroom on this bus.

Now t recap the last few days, we got to Berlin Sunday night and really lucked out with our hostel. Not only did it have large rooms and air conditioning, but there was a huge festival going on Friday though Monday about two blocks from the front door. It was apparently the annual festival of cultures, so there were a couple music stages and hundreds of small stands selling food and drinks from around the world. We spent about two hours Sunday night just wandering around this festival; I got ripped off on some dried fruit and we had our first taste of German wursts and beer. A couple observations about the Germans, first, while they do deserve a good deal of credit for their brats, someone needs to start importing some hot dog buns, because serving a brat on a round roll makes about as much sense as rooting for Duke. Secondly, there is either an epidemic of kleptomania or some kind of push for recycling here, because you cannot buy any kind of drink without a deposit for the cup, glass, or plastic bttle that it comes in; and it's not the 10 cent deposit that Michigan puts on cans either, it is often as much as a Euro. After the festival I was, finally, able to do laundry for the first time this trip so I'm feeling much cleaner now.

Monday we slept in a little bit and tried to take a free walking tour at 1; unfortunately one of the guides didn't show and we got bumped to the 4 o'clock tour. That gave us a couple hours to wander around on our own. Berlin is by far the most spread out city we've visited on this trip, it's still walkable, because it's very flat, but it takes a while to get from one spot to the next. Before meeting back up with the tour group at four we stopped for lunch at a subway, which is notable only because it was the first place in Europe that I've seen a self service soda fountain (read free refills), it's rare enough to see one behind the counter.

The free tour (which really just means that you're expected to tip the guide rather than buy a ticket), was very interesting and informative. It covered, in about 3 hours, most of the history of Germany (which I was surprised to find out only really began in the 1870s). Surprisingly, the entire tour was in the former East Berlin, most of the major sites and memorials (which there are quite a few of) were East of the wall, or in between the two walls.

The tour began at the Brandenburg Gate, which incidentally was built in the 18th century as a symbol of victory. Funny story about this gate, there's a famous sculpture atop it, of a goddess pulled in a chariot by four horses. When the gate was built she was the goddess of peace and she looked straight ahead over the city, but at some point France stole the statue, it's unclear to me how, because I can't imagine the French taking anything by force. Eventually though, Germany got it back and when they did, the changed the goddess to be the goddess of victory and shifted her gaze to stare directly at the French Embassy. This was one of the highlights of the tour for me, because I'm always in the mood for a good joke about the French.

The next stop on our tour was the Reichstag, now the seat of the German Parliament. It was originally built to be the Seat of the Weimar (sp?) republic after WWI, but after Hitler burned it down and blamed the communists in order to gain power, it fell out of use. It was on the East side when Berlin was split, but since it was between the two walls, the soviets didn't bother to rebuild it. Like seemingly everything on our tour the reconstruction came only after a design contest to determine the best way to rebuild it. It really is a cool building, there is a glass dome with walkways going around it open to the public, directly above the parliament chamber. The idea is apparently to constantly remind the politicians who they work for, by placing the people above them.

From the Reichstag we made our way to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, which was by far the most powerful of the memorials we saw. Sean and I had actually stumbled upon it by accident during the 3 hours we were waiting to start the tour, and interesting, our experience was exactly as our guide described its intention. First of all the monument is huge, there are apparently 2,711 cement blocks (each about 3' X 6', I'd say). The blocks are neatly arranged into rows and columns, but vary in height from 1' to at least 12'. When you get to the memorial, and you really can't help but get there eventually, because it's right in the middle of everything, there are no signs to tell you what it is, but it is painfully obvious that it has some significance. We wound up wandering through the memorial, until we found the entrance to the exhibit below, which is where we finally found out what it was. We didn't have time to walk through the exhibit until the next day, so I'll explain that more later.

Back to the tour, our guide explained that this memorial was very controversial, particularly in the choice of it's location. There was big push to build the memorial at one of the concentration camps (Sachsenhausen was about an hour north of Berlin, and there are trips and tours available). This spot, where the memorial was constructed, has no real relation to the holocaust, but our guide argued, and I'm inclined to agree, that even if you offer free trips to and from Saschsenhausen, people have to make a decision to go. This memorial, right in the middle of the city, forces you to confront the issue of the holocaust, whether you want to or not. It is a daily reminder for many Berliners, that walk, bike, or drive past it on their way to work, what can happen when power is concentrated in the wrong hands.

We moved on from the holocaust memorial, to a very different, and appropriately non-existent memorial. We stopped in a parking lot 50 meters above the bunker where Hitler committed suicide. There isn't so much as a plaque to commemorate him, and it isn't clear what happened to his remains so this parking lot is the closest thing there is to his final resting place. It's worth speaking here of the obvious struggle in Germany, to come to grips with this part of history. There is an obvious effort to acknowledge and memorialize these atrocities, by the German government, but they're also, understandably, hesitant to acknowledge the man who set them in motion. The Nazi party, is incidentally, still an actual political party in Germany, and there is a fear that any acknowledgment would turn into a neo-nazi shrine. On the other hand, the vast majority of Germans hate his memory, when the Madame Toussaud's was museum in Berlin built a Hitler exhibit, he was decapitated within two hours.

From the parking lot we moved on to cover several more memorials, including the site of the
Nazi book burnings and a memorial for the German soldiers, spanning multiple wars. I won't bore you with the details of all these memorials other than to describe the site of the book burnings, which i thought was really cool. The book burnings took place in a square between the library, an opera house, and the University, in the middle of this square there is a piece of glass that looks down into a room full of empty bookshelves.

The tour also took us, quickly, past checkpoint charlie. I didn't realize before this tour that there were actually two walls, both on the soviet side, so that if someone managed to get over the first wall, soviet snipers would be able to pick them off before they made it over the second one. They walls not only split the city down the middle, but also went all the way around West Berlin, about 100 miles, and their first incarnation, begun at 2 am, was completed in 57 hours.

Tuesday morning we got up relatively early, thinking that the Third Reich tour we wanted to take started at 11, it actually didn't start until 1. After realizing this, and some minor confusion about what time it actually was, we got a chance to visit the exhibit beneath the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. The exhibit began with a time line, describing the iterations that the Nazi Persecution went through prior to the final solution. The most powerful parts of the exhibit though, were the efforts to share the individual stories of many of the murdered Jews. One room had sections of the floor lit to display notes handwritten by men, women, and children in or on their way to concentration camps. Another was completely dark and quiet, except for a screen on each wall displaying the name of one of the victims and a narrator giving their brief personal history. The next room told the stories of families affected by the holocaust, showing family pictures, and describing the way the families were split up and most of them eventually killed. The last room was perhaps the most difficult to deal with, there were phones built into alcoves down one wall that you could pick up and listen to stories from holocaust survivors. I think that overall the exhibit and memorial were very well done and pretty appropriate, but it was difficult to walk through and think about, not at all enjoyable.

The Third Reich tour that we eventually took that afternoon was good, but it was a little repetitive from the "free" tour the day before. Last night we kind of went on the pub crawl organized by the same people who run the tours. I say kind of, because technically we never paid, but it was kind of their fault since the only person who could collect the money seemed to be on an hour long 10 minute break. We left before even getting to the last stop since we were planning to take the bus so early this morning. I didn't realize when we left how far we actually were from the hostel, but it took us almost an hour to walk back.

I think that about covers Berlin, we'll be in Munich for at least two nights, but we've yet to decide where we're going next. Any suggestions?